Quin Hillyer
3-28-12
It takes no great originality to say it, but still it must be said: The establishment media often does a terrible job covering politics. Witness the repeated dust-ups during the Republican presidential nomination fight over the leading contenders' series of supposedly self-damaging comments - comments which, in context, are hardly objectionable.
Just about every candidate so far has been victimized by having the media stir up trouble by destroying context in a flagrant, despicable way. Good journalism always requires that context be reported as accurately as possible, but in case after case, reporters for supposedly elite publications have highlighted individual phrases from within longer verbal paragraphs in ways making it sound like the candidates were saying something they quite obviously didn't mean.
So as not to show favoritism, let's take some examples from each of the current front-runners in the Republican field.
On Feb. 1, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was widely quoted saying "I'm not concerned about the very poor." Horrors! Stop the presses! This "gaffe" dominated the news cycle for a couple of days, and still bedeviled Romney in some ways for weeks.
Of course, the full statement he made to CNN, from which the awful-sounding snippet was taken, was this: "I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor - we have a safety net there," he said. "If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich - they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." When CNN's Soledad O'Brien immediately challenged the part about the "very poor," Romney clarified what he meant - within seconds: "Well, you had to finish the sentence, Soledad," Romney replied. "I said, I'm not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, then I will repair it.... But my campaign is focused on middle-income American." Romney added that he would gladly look into whether the "ample safety net" for the poor - such as food stamps, Medicaid and housing vouchers - needs to be strengthened. But, he said, the middle class "are the people that have been most badly hurt during the Obama years."
So perhaps Romney put it inelegantly. But it is clear what he meant: The poor at least have a safety net, but the middle class is struggling. It was completely out of bounds for pundits and reporters to act as if he made some sort of Freudian slip evincing a secret disdain for the destitute.
It was likewise radically unfair when the media went ballistic when former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said: ".... I don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be....." Headline writers went ape. They were aghast. How heartless could Santorum be?
Of course, the statement had nothing to do with Santorum not wanting to lessen unemployment. Instead, it was about his campaign not being dependent on having a high unemployment rate in order to be effective against Barack Obama. He was saying his campaign would be strong regardless of the unemployment rate. He had just finished a sentence saying his campaign is about larger issues of freedom, and then he made the "I don't care" statement - and then, in the very next sentence, he explained what he meant: "My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It's something more foundational that's going on."
Santorum also was harmed last week when headline writers nationwide wrote that he said he would prefer Obama to Romney as president. Of course, he said no such thing. He never used the words "Obama" or "Romney." And, as able columnists Matt Lewis and Erick Erickson noted, the context made clear Santorum was talking about how a lot of voters see a race if the candidates appear to be too much alike. Erickson's assessment defending Santorum is especially significant because he has spent 11 months belittling the Pennsylvanian so strongly that one observer described Erickson "hating Santorum with the heat of 10,000 suns." So if Erickson, clearly not just a supporter making excuses for his candidate, can see the truth, why couldn't, for instance, the Associated Press come close to getting it in context?
It was only marginally less unfair for Romney to be heavily blitzed when one of his top aides compared his campaign tactics to an "Etch-a-Sketch." Yes, the aide did say it, and most of the reporting did get the context correct. But it was an aide, not the candidate himself; and while the aide was asked about issue positions, the aide seemed to be thinking of message-crafting rather than about principles. It should have been only a blip: After all, that's how campaign aides are trained to think.
In an election this important, the American public deserves better than the reporting we've been force-fed. Serious issues are at stake - and the candidates, to their credit, are trying to talk about them. The establishment media, in suggesting otherwise, is giving evidence not of the candidates' shallowness, but of the shallowness of the media itself.
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To read another article by Quin Hillyer, click here.
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