An Issue of Fairness

by emptywheel

mamayaga makes a superb point, in response to Byron Calame's explanation that withholding the NSA domestic spying story was an issue of fairness:

[C]andidates affected by a negative article deserve to have time — several days to a week — to get their response disseminated before voters head to the polls.

To which mamayaga asks:

By the same logic, shouldn't the major news media have held the story of bin Laden's conveeeenient new videotape until a few days after the election? Or did they only want to be "fair" to one candidate?

Well, Calame doesn't really speak for all the major news media. But let's see how the NYT treated the OBL video:

• October 30, (quite possibly the same "eve of the election" day that the NYT decided not to run the NSA spying story), a 1400-word A1 story on the video:

Mr. bin Laden did not explicitly threaten any new attacks in an excerpt of the videotape, first broadcast on Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language satellite network. But the appearance of the tape four days before Election Day injected Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden into a presidential campaign in which the threat posed by terrorism has weighed heavily.

• October 30, a David Brooks column on the video:

Remember when John Kerry told Matt Bai of The Times Magazine that he wanted to reduce the terrorists to a nuisance? Kerry vowed to mitigate the problem of terrorism until it became another regrettable and tolerable fact of life, like gambling, organized crime and prostitution.

That was the interview in which he said Sept. 11 ''didn't change me much at all.'' He said it confirmed in him a sense of urgency, ''of doing the things we thought we needed to be doing.''

Well, the Osama bin Laden we saw last night was not a problem that needs to be mitigated. He was not the leader of a movement that can be reduced to a nuisance.

What we saw last night was revolting. I suspect that more than anything else, he reminded everyone of the moral indignation we all felt on and after Sept. 11.

• October 31, discussion of the video in a weekly news round-up

On Friday, in his first new video tape in more than a year, Osama bin Laden threatened new attacks and chided Mr. Bush for not protecting the country on Sept. 11. Eleventh-hour developments like this always have the potential of turning an election. But the best bet is that the outcome on Tuesday will depend not on the latest news but on each side's success in getting their supporters to vote.

• October 31, a MoDo column on the video:

Some people thought the October surprise would be the president producing Osama.

Instead, it was Osama producing yet another video taunting the president and lecturing America.

After bin Laden's pre-election commentary from his anchor desk at a secure, undisclosed location, many TV chatterers and Republicans postulated that the evildoer's campaign intrusion would help the president.

O.B.L., they said, might re-elect W.

• October 31, the suggestion that OBL's video would change Kerry's GOTV priorities:

For Mr. Kerry, at least before the Osama bin Laden video was released late Friday, the high-paced final week of this neck-and-neck presidential campaign was all about invigorating his supporters to get out the vote in the states that could swing either way. And so, surrounded by red, white and blue bunting, by the Boilermakers for Kerry, the Sheet Metal Workers for Kerry, the Women for Kerry, he exhorted.

• October 31, an AP story about the government's call for heightened vigilance:

Acting on the release of a new videotape from Osama bin Laden, the federal government has alerted state and local officials to be extra vigilant ahead of Tuesday's elections.

The bulletin said that the bin Laden tape and a second video that showed a self-proclaimed American member of Al Qaeda were "clearly intended to influence and instill fear in the American people."

[btw--Was there really a second video? I don't remember that. Did they ever find the guy?]

• November 1 (by now the NYT had definitely made the decision to hold the NSA story), a Bob Herbert mention of the video in the context of the surreality of the election

There is a hallucinatory quality to the news as Americans prepare to vote tomorrow in what is probably the most critical election the country has faced since 1932. Osama bin Laden made his bizarre cameo appearance on Friday, taunting the president who once promised to get him dead or alive. Commentators have been compulsively reading the tea leaves ever since, trying to determine who was helped by the video, George W. Bush or John Kerry.

• November 2, a play on the OBL video in an entertainment column

Oops, excuse us, Al Jazeera has forwarded to us streaming video of OSAMA BIN LADEN. He's in a cafe in a mountainous desert area, his laptop before him, and even without the simultaneous translation, we can see he's annoyed. And in an e-mail message he told us just how much: ''Boldface! How vapid can you be! YASIR ARAFAT is not a well man. My people have just put out this really nice video positioning me as the international head of the People Who Really Hate You club. Lawyers in your country are positioned to make election night last into February and you are babbling about Sharon Stone drinking Champagne! Why can't you report something important?''

Whew. They sure avoided giving that election-turning news any coverage, didn't they? And all in precisely the same time frame when they decided not to run the NSA story.

Of course, it's ridiculous to suggest the NYT should have held off on the video. After all, it's news. Perhaps not the big story on A1, perhaps not the two columns focused primarily on the video. But the NYT is going to report it because it is news.

Kind of like the NSA domestic spying story.

Comments

[Kagro X]

More precisely, the NYT is going to report it because it's news they can be scooped with, and thus made to look foolish and out of touch.

The work of their own reporters, however, is something over which they have exclusive control, and can, when they decide to bury it, bury it completely.

When the issue is "if we don't report it, it stays quiet," they claim the question turns on fairness to the candidates.

When the issue is "if we don't report it, someone else will," the question appears to turn on fairness to their shareholders.

By the way, where did this fear of effecting the outcome of elections come from? Why do newspapers endorse candidates? Or indeed, why do they cover campaigns at all? Wouldn't it be more "fair," not to mention easier, to just stop covering campaigns altogether, and merely report the date of the election?

[emptywheel]

Beyond the fact, in those three days, the OBL video got spun pretty hard, by both sides. I think the NSA spying story MIGHT have been the same, particularly in 2004. A lot of Republicans would have used the revelation to say Kerry was soft on terror.

[&y]

I'm going to pretend I don't understand this from Calame: "I agree that candidates affected by a negative article deserve to have time — several days to a week — to get their response disseminated before voters head to the polls."

What negative article? I was under the impression--mistaken perhaps--that Bush was (and remains) proud of the NSA program. That, ultimately, the only reason Bush didn't want to see a big article about it in the NYT was because such publicity might tip off the evildoers. After all, Calame also says, "[NYT Executive Director Keller] has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays was the administration’s claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the program’s legality."

Everyone involved was satisfied. Bush thought it was a vital program to our national security. Kerry would, presumably, have come out against it. In other words, except for the (dubious) operational need to keep the program double-super secret, it was like most of the other issues in the election: Bush thinks we should be doing XYZ; Kerry thinks XYZ is a bad idea.

So who decided the NSA program was a "negative story"--one that demanded giving Bush time to disseminate a response?

I guess I'm with Kagro X on this. The media should stop covering campaigns entirely. An even fairer option might be to keep the names of the candidates secret (ala Iraq) so voters can't hold unfair conversations around the proverbial water cooler (or in the fever swamps.)

[orionATL]

a nice short history here. very informative; very damning.

can anyone doubt that the times, like any other corporate media, will always act in what its honchos perceive to be the corporation's (aka their own)best interest, rather than in any national or public interest?

this is where non-corporate media, like the next hurrah, has it all over the corporate media.

i'd guess emptywheel's only editor is spell-check and her conscience. she doesn't have multiple editors or producers to slowly grind her research and insights into chewed silage.

james risen probably had two to four editors, not to mention the nitwit, masticating his work. the only result was an eventual belch from byron calame.

[Kagro X]

Bush became "proud" of the NSA spying when he could no longer hide it, and the election was over.

When there was still an "accountability moment" looming, it was a "negative" story. Or so they surely argued to the Times.