The painful irony is that Gore suffered the same kind of misquotes and distortions in 2000 that Obama is facing today.
For instance, the major news media endlessly repeated the apocryphal Gore quote, “I invented the Internet,” and reporters for the Washington Post and New York Times gave rise to another misquote about Gore’s role in the Love Canal case, “I was the one that started it all.”
In Gore’s case, too, the major news media was loathe to correct errors and instead let the falsehoods ripple across the nation, empowering a potent Bush campaign “theme” that Gore was “delusional.”
[For details on these and other misrepresentations about Gore, see Consortiumnews.com “Al Gore v. the Media” or our book, Neck Deep.]
The Bush Rules
Ombudsman Howell’s gentle critique of the sloppy reporting by Milbank and Weisman also stands in marked contrast to the severe punishments meted out to journalists who were faulted for not meeting the highest standards of journalism in criticism of George W. Bush.
Compare, for instance, what happened to four CBS producers and CBS News anchor Dan Rather when, during Campaign 2004, they went with a story on “60 Minutes II” that cited old memos as part of their evidence that a youthful George W. Bush had shirked his National Guard duty.
Right-wing bloggers immediately challenged the documents over what turned out to be the false belief that IBM typewriters in the early 1970s didn’t allow for superscripts for the “th” or “st” at the end of numbers. In fact, some did.
But the accusation of forged documents quickly spread through Fox News and other right-wing news outlets – as well as mainstream ones still nervous about challenging President Bush. CBS News ordered an outside investigation (using George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General Richard Thornburgh) and concluded that the documents (though not necessarily forgeries) required more vetting.
For failing to fully analyze the questioned documents, four CBS producers were fired, including Mary Mapes who had helped break the Abu Ghraib torture scandal only months earlier. The fallout also included CBS pushing their longtime anchor Dan Rather into retirement.
In other words, five professional careers were destroyed because the journalists didn’t go the extra mile in checking out some memos that – while themselves questionable – reflected what was undeniably true, that Bush had blown off a required flight physical and was getting favored treatment in the National Guard.
This central fact was confirmed by the secretary of Bush’s commander in a later interview. And to this day, no decisive evidence has been uncovered disproving the authenticity of the memos. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Bush Rule of Journalism.”]
However, just as any misstep in criticizing Bush or a powerful Republican will guarantee a fierce response and possibly the quick end to a long journalistic career, the opposite rule applies when trashing someone like Gore or Obama.
Then, even getting the story completely backwards doesn’t merit a timely correction or a published letter to the editor, let alone a reprimand or a firing.
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