Wash. Post's Dave Weigel Explains How Trump's Extraordinarily Brief Policy Statements Exploit A Media Vulnerability

MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel pointed to a massive media vulnerability that Donald Trump regularly exploits, writing that even though the Republican nominee for president “has offered less policy detail than any candidate for president in my lifetime,” Trump is able to game the media because he “has never failed to offer enough detail to fit in a headline or cable news chyron.”

Weigel’s article comes as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump released personal health information indrastically different ways, with Clinton releasing detailed letters from her doctor to the public, and Trump choosing to release significantly less information. As Weigel noted, while “The asymmetry between what Clinton released and Trump released was notable … A reader scanning headlines would think that both candidates released full sets of information.”  

Weigel explains that this has been a general trend, in which “coverage of campaigns needs to be shrunk to fit a chyron, anyway” and that “Trump's innovation has been to preshrink the news.” The result is that it appears as if “Trump is trading Clinton blow for blow and white paper for white paper” if voters “only glance at the news.” Weigel added that Trump’s method gives him the “ability to get credit — and the headline, and the chyron — for what other candidates would consider less than a bare minimum.” From the September 15 article:

CBS News reporter Mark Knoller is a Boswellian chronicler of the White House. How many foreign trips has the president taken? How many times has he spoken to the press from the Brady press briefing room? Do not waste precious time: Knoller knows.

This is why it was striking when Knoller tweeted that on Wednesday night's news broadcasts, "newly released medical reports from @HillaryClinton and @realDonaldTrump" were the lead stories. Jamelle Bouie, a CBS News commentator (and former colleague of mine at Slate) was among the people reminding Knoller that Trump had not actually released anything. He had taped an episode of "The Dr. Oz Show"; reporters who talked to audience remembers discovered that he released some details, but not the report.

The asymmetry between what Clinton released and Trump released was notable, though pretty typical of the campaign. Clinton released an updated letter from her physician, which revealed details like her medication regimen and cholesterol level. (It once again debunked the idea that she is staggering from neurological damage, a conspiracy theory furthered on Fox News.) In the body of their stories, most reporters noted the difference between what was revealed; in summing it up for headlines or tweets, the distinction was elided. A reader scanning headlines would think that both candidates released full sets of information.

[...]

What's the upshot of this? I'm going to draw a lesson from a deeply unrelated aspect of my job — I frequently travel through airports or park in newsrooms that are blaring cable TV. Trump has offered less policy detail than any candidate for president in my lifetime. But he has never failed to offer enough detail to fit in a headline or cable news chyron.

That matters. If, like many people, you only glance at the news (yes, we know how long readers spend finishing articles), you come away with the impression that Trump is trading Clinton blow for blow and white paper for white paper. If either candidate released their entire medical history, or Trump revealed his entire tax returns, only a handful of voters might even read them. They'd depend on the press to find the story and the lede. Most coverage of campaigns needs to be shrunk to fit a chyron, anyway; Trump's innovation has been to preshrink the news.

[...]

It's rote for conservatives to see a bias in how their candidate is being covered. On a lot of metrics, like coverage of social issues and immigration, the media's norms are to the left of conservative voters. But there's growing liberal anger about Trump's "hacking" of the media, and his ability to get credit — and the headline, and the chyron — for what other candidates would consider less than a bare minimum.

Do Conservative Pundits Ever Have To Be Right?

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters for America

Conservative hand-wringing in the wake of President Obama's victory continues unabated, with both voters and strategists venting their frustration about the GOP's loss, while condemning the conservative media forleading followers to believe a GOP victory was imminent. (A landslide!)

Instead of being honest down the homestretch, conservative pundits on Fox News and at places like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post fed Republicans a steady diet of falsehoods and Pollyannaish analysis that ran counter to the clear polling data about the state of the race.

Some Republican leaders are now promoting wholesale changes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal urged Republicans to "stop being the party of stupid" and to reject the anti-intellectualism that has often defined the political movement. "We've also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism," hetold Politico.

But "dumbed-down conservatism" is what drives the GOP Noise Machine. It's what Fox, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media have been pushing for years and posting healthy profits in the process. If there's going to be widespread change within the conservative movement it's going to have to include the right-wing media. And for that to happen, accountability has to be finally introduced into the equation.

Currently it's a foreign notion among many commentators who boast dubious track records of being chronically incorrect. Early indications are that most conservative pundits won't face recriminations from within the GOP Noise Machine for getting everything wrong about the campaign.  But will consumers finally revolt?

Note that last week CNBC's Larry Kudlow welcomed Romney loyalist Jennifer Rubin from the Washington Post onto his program two nights after Romney lost decisively. On the show there was no discussion about how all of Rubin's horse race insights had been monumentally wrong.

Kudlow politely declined to ask Rubin about her suggestion that Romney might win nearly all the battleground states. (He won just one, North Carolina.) And he also didn't discuss the revelation that Rubin had misled readers in real time about the status of the campaign. The conservative CNBC host, among those whoerroneously predicted a Romney blowout, politely demurred and accountability was ignored.

For weeks, if not months, Rubin's readers were led to believe the Obama campaign was crumbling and the incumbent was making one foolish move after another. After Obama won an electoral landslide, Rubin wasn't asked about her dreadfully erroneous spin. Neither was Kudlow's other guest, James Pethokoukis, a blogger from the American Enterprise Institute who forecast Romney would win 301 electoral votes. (Romney won 206.) 

Between the three of them, Kudlow, Rubin and Pethokoukis could not have been more wrong about the election; an election they allegedly studied intently all year long. And none of the three bothered to acknowledge their failings on CNBC that night.

The Weekly Standard's Jay Cost was another full-time campaign watcher who obsessively assured readers that Obama's chances were dim. Casting a critical eye towards polling, Cost presented his "interpretation" of what was happening in the campaign: There was no way voter turnout among Democrats and Republicans would look the same as it did in 2008.

It did.

Cost's explanation last week then, for why he got everything wrong about Obama vs. Romney? Answer: The Obama campaign "played to its base with a level of intensity rarely seen in the modern era." (Whatever that means.) And Cost was surprised that it worked. 

Here's the real punch line, though, and here's why the conservative media have dug themselves such a deep, insular hole: Two days after Cost got everything wrong about the campaign, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal linked to Cost's post-election column and urged people to read Cost's deep insights about the campaign. (Surprise! Taranto loved Cost's piece about how the Romney defeat did not represent a serious set back for the GOP.)

So Cost's penalty for completely misjudging the election was to be touted as a sharp thinker by the Wall Street Journal. The point being, within the GOP media bubble there's no price for having been consistently wrong about the campaign. There's no shame in announcing all the polls are wrong (biased!), and that Romney was surging to an easy win, even though both claims were pure fantasy.

That no-harm/no-foul rule also extends to the mainstream media. Five days after Romney's defeat, Face the Nation invited Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan to pontificate about the campaign. It was an interesting choice considering Noonan had botched the election, insisting the day before the vote that Romney was marching to victory over the "small and lost" Obama campaign. 

Uninterested in polling data, Noonan sensed Romney's looming victory because "all the vibrations" were right. Plus, she saw more Romney/Ryan yard signs while out traveling in Florida.

I realize Noonan is not a data-miner and her writing style is more impressionistic. But she works for the largest newspaper in America and her (erroneous) election-eve analysis came down to "vibrations" and lawn signs? That's just embarrassing.

Noonan appears to be in no danger of having her reputation dinged by the media, though. What about angry conservative media consumers?  Will they penalize any of the sites and pundits who emphatically misled readers, listeners and viewers about the state of the race?

Historically, there's little evidence of right-wing media outlets losing their audience in the wake of getting stories wrong, even getting them spectacularly wrong. There seems to be an almost tacit understanding among conservative news consumers that the GOP Noise Machine tells them what they want to hear about how crooked and un-American Democrats are. And that even if the stories don't hold up to scrutiny, consumers remain loyal.

But last week's election results seemed especially traumatic for Republican voters, so it's possible there could be fall out.

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky highlighted this angry comment posted by a dedicated RedState reader [emphasis added]:

The simple fact is that in the run-up to this election, we were fed a steady diet of lies, from all our "loyal" sources. We need to hold not only the Romney campaign accountable, but also the conservative press (specifically the Murdoch press - Fox was the worst of the bunch), and the establishment talking heads like Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan. We need to get clear about something: these people are selling us a product. They have been taking our money and telling us bedtime stories. We complain about the MSM, but can we honestly say that the conservative press has been more honest?

Writing a scathing critique of the right-wing media's debacle, The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf  noted that in covering the election, the biggest news story of the year, "the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media."

Indeed it did. And unless people start demanding some much-needed accountability from the GOP Noise Machine, the conservative drubbings will continue.

Will Media Let GOP Get Away With "Built It" Convention?

ERIC BOEHLERT/media matters for america

In what is likely a first for a major political party, one of the themes for the GOP's nominating convention next week is built around a falsehood. When Republicans meet in Tampa on Tuesday, the banner will be "We Built It," which plays off the manufactured controversy this summer in which conservatives, led by Fox News, claimed President Obama insulted small businessmen and women by supposedly saying they hadn't built their own success.

Speaking to supporters for nearly an hour in Roanoke, VA. on July 13, the president touched on the topic of small business success and the collective forces that shape it, such as the U.S. infrastructure and teachers. Fox quickly claimed Obama insulted small business owners by telling them of their accomplishments, "you didn't build that." (He was referring to the "this unbelievable American system" which includes the "roads and bridges.")

Obama's opponents succeeded in concocting an uproar over a single sentence from an Obama campaign appearance by ripping it out of context. They were able to do that despite being debunked by fact-checker ("out of context"), after fact-checker ("taken wildly out of context") after fact-checker ("ignores the larger context of the president's meaning") after fact-checker ("that quote distorts the meaning of Obama's claim").

Nonetheless, through the sheer force of repetition, as well as taking advantage of a timid press corps that too often suggested the meaning of Obama's comment was somehow in dispute (or a press corps that didn't even care), "build that" has lived on and is now being revived in time for Tampa.   

The question now is will the press allow Republicans to get away with it again? Or will the press do its job and point out that the party's "build that" attack revolves around a Fox-fueled falsehood?

Early indications are not encouraging.

Under the headline "Ryan Builds On Obama's Comment In Roanoke," CNN on Wednesday reported that leading up to next week's convention, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) campaigned in the Virginia town where Obama made his "you didn't build that" comment; a comment that has been "seized upon by Republicans," according to CNN.

But CNN left out how the Republican claim that Obama's comment meant he disdained small business had been thoroughly debunked. Instead, CNN simply reported that the Obama and Romney campaigns "dispute each other's interpretation" of the "build that" remark.

Interpretation? That's being charitable to the GOP.  

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, USA Today reported on the Republicans' "We Built It" convention theme. After noting Mitt Romney "hammered President Obama" for weeks over the comment and that GOP campaign ads were created to tout it, USA Today reported, "Obama has said Romney's ads criticizing the line are "flat-out wrong" and take his words about the role of government out of context."

So Romney claimed the "build that" remark revealed Obama's contempt for business, while the president insisted the comment was taken out of context. Who's right? USA Today didn't bother trying to adjudicate the dispute.

And yesterday, The Hill reported Romney's nominating convention would incorporate Obama's "controversial remark." Unlike CNN and USA Today though, The Hill didn't even bother noting the Democrats' vocal objection to the use of "build that," or that the charge had been thoroughly debunked.

Assigning a convention theme that's built around a specific falsehood takes nerve. Are Republicans betting reporters will give them a pass in Tampa?

Occupy Wall Street Is A “Populist” Movement (The Tea Party Is Not)

by Eric Boehlert/Media Matters

News coverage of Occupy Wall Street is starting to pick up.

Although the media attention, and specifically the television interest, lags far behind what the emerging Tea Party enjoyed during its early days, the ongoing protests entrenched in New York City’s Financial District show new signs of growth as they enter their third week. Mass arrests over the weekend, along with the fact the protests have entered a semi-permanent stage in lower Manhattan, has likely prompted reporters and producers to give the progressive event a second look, after mostly dismissing the happening last month.

However, when covering Occupy Wall Street, the press still refuses to accurately label the protests as what they are: a distinctly populist uprising.

Condemning criminal behavior and the sweeping destruction Wall Street’s big banks and their executives have caused the U.S. economy in recent years, Occupy Wall Street’s message is without question a populist one. (i.e. "Populism: A political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite.”) And it’s an agenda that strikes an anti-Wall Streetchord with the American people.

So why don’t the dispatches from Zuccotti Park, home base for the growing anti-Wall Street movement, include that alluring, on-the-side-of-the-people phrase that so many politicians covet? And more importantly, why isn’t the press heralding Occupy Wall Street as a populist movement when reporters and pundits have spent the last three years declaring, in unison, that the right-wing, Obama-hating Tea Party movement is  a “populist” one, when it most certainly is not.

The press has been profoundly wrong about the Tea Party since the very beginning. Far from being a populist surge, the partisan-to-the-core movement remains completely divorced from the traditional sense of what "populism" has stood for in American politics. (Reactionary? Yes. Populist? No way.)

The Tea Party practically worships at the alter of big business and millionaires, whom the movement seems willing to sacrifice its political life for in order to protect them from paying higher taxes. That's not populism. But trying hold Wall Street accountable most definitely is. 

Remember when Tea Party forerunners Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ran to the defense of white-collar executives at financial services giant AIG when it was suggested they give back their cushy bonuses since the company had to be bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $170 billion?  (Beck in particular became completely unglued at the prospect of millionaire AIG executives being forced to forfeit some of their pay.)

Or what about oil giant BP and the right-wing reaction when the Obama administration, in an effort to hold the company accountable for its historic spill, secured $20 billion from BP to pay for the cleanup and to compensate working Americans for the damage done to their livelihoods. How did leaders of the Tea Party media movement (i.e. Fox News) react to that? They defended the oil spill giant, of course.

And don’t forget that in the summer of 2009, self-described Tea Party members stormed town hall forums and freaked out at the prospect of private insurance giants having to face public competition. So yes, it’s a movement born, in part, out of its desire to protest on behalf of insurance companies.

How defending insurance and petroleum giants represents a struggle against the elites on behalf of working people is beyond me. In fact, the Tea Party embrace represents the opposite of what populism stands for.

The press has spent years erroneously labeling the distinctly conservative, big business, pro-status quo movement as “populist.” (See here, here, here and here.) Yet today, there’s a truly grassroots, truly anti-elite movement unfolding in New York City and the same political press corps sees very little that’s “populist” about it?

Note that one of the first detailed dispatches the New York Times published about Occupy Wall Street, by Ginia Bellafante, produced a sweepingly dismissive review of the unfolding protests.

As Allison Kilkinney explained in The Nation:

Ginia Bellafante gives a devastating account of the event’s attendees, depicting them as scatterbrained, sometimes borderline-psychotic transients.

Bellafante, who is not a reporter but a columnist for the Times, offered a representation of the protesters that is as muddled as the amalgam of activists’ motives she presents in the span of the article.

Little in the Times piece hinted at, let alone celebrated, the populist foundation of the downtown protests.

I wonder if there’s an inherent newsroom perception that suggests liberal protesters are confused hippies, but right-wing protesters represent the masses; that they’re  “inherently more newsworthy and deserving of sustained coverage than left wing ones,” as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent suggested.

Truth is, one of the only mainstream outlets I’ve seen that captured the true nature of Occupy Wall Street, as well as contrasted it with the faux populism of the Tea Party, was New Jersey’s largest newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger, and its recent, dead-on editorial [emphasis added]:

Occupy Wall Street, a protest against bank bailouts and corporate greed, is what the tea party should have been -- probably would have been -- if the movement hadn't been hijacked by savvy conservatives, bankrolled by billionaires and fictitiously portrayed as an everyman revolt.

Instead of channeling the anger and helplessness of everyday Americans, the tea party instead has argued for spending cuts that have hurt them.

Rather than calling for stricter controls on reckless Wall Street financiers, tea party members (and mainstream Republicans) have knelt at the altar of the super rich -- calling them "job creators" and defeating every proposal to increase their tax rates, which are at historic lows.

In terms of landing additional press coverage, the liberal media watchdog group FAIR recently suggested that if Occupy Wall Street organizers “want more media attention, they should just call themselves Tea Party activists.”

So true. And if liberal protesters want to be described in the press as people-powered “populists,” they should also just call themselves Tea party activists.

Journalists Must Donate To Anti-Choice Organization In Order To Cover Palin’s Speech

By Ben Armbruster Today, Sarah Palin will be speaking at a fundraiser for the Austin-based Heroic Media, a “faith-based” anti-choice organization that seeks to reduce the number of abortions “by creating a Culture of Life through television, billboard and internet advertising.” As part of its anti-choice media strategy, Heroic Media airs television commercials that “encourage viewers to learn more about and rethink the Life issue.” The group’s Internet strategy tries to direct Google users to an anti-choice website:

Heroic Media utilizes an online strategy to purchase top listings on search engines, such as google, so when teens “google” the word “abortion,”… “I think I’m pregnant,” … or “terminate pregnancy,” one of the top web sites they’ll see is our partner web site http://www.teenbreaks.com

Teenbreaks.com provides information about abortion, communicating with parents, adoption, cutting and more.

As Indecision Forever notes, the fact that Teenbreaks.com provides “information” on “cutting” is a giveaway that it isn’t interested in providing women with the best possible facts about their reproductive rights: “Cutting, that’s right, because self-mutilation has everything to do with handling an unplanned pregnancy.”

But in order to cover Palin’s speech, the Austin-American Statesman reports that journalists will have to make a contribution to Heroic Media:

Restrictions: Heroic Media will try to prohibit video and audio recordings of Palin’s appearance, and news organizations wishing to cover her speech must buy a ticket, the proceeds of which will go to Heroic Media.

Denying media access has become Palin’s standard operating procedure. After the debacle that was her interview with CBS’ Katie Couric during the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin made sure she wouldn’t step into any embarrassing interviews — often demanding that reporters submit their questions “ahead of time” to guarantee a one-on-one. And as a private citizen, the former Alaska governor requires that any questions asked at her speaking engagements be pre-screened. Just last week at an event in Eugene, OR, media were “not…allowed to ask her questions and take still pictures… [or] videotape or record it in anyway.”

Earlier this year, after conservatives criticized Palin’s $100,000+ fee to speak at the Tea Party convention, she said she would donate the proceeds to “the cause.” Perhaps that’s what she is trying to get the media to do as well.

M.C.L Comment: Again what's the appeal of this woman? She's just a attractive middle age female version of George W.Bush, the only difference between them is that Sarah Palin doesn't have a Karl Rove that can program her like Rove did with Bush. Like Bush she doesn't know what the hell she is talking about, like Bush get her off the talking points and she just rambles on and play talking point scramble in her head. The question I'm going to ask is this if Sarah Palin was man or a older, not so attractive, little chunky around the edges woman would people care?

We all know if Palin was a man or not so attractive woman she would be just another washed up politician just ranting on Facebook.