Burying the Lede: Special RNC Poll Edition
Yet Again, the Headline Isn't the Real Story
by Tamara Baker

August 29, 2004 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (apj.us) -- Censorship in America takes many forms.

But the most insidious is that subtle art which I have described in a previous column, that practice called "burying the lede". With "burying the lede", the GOP/Media twist information favorable to Democrats and bury that information down deep into an article framed not to favor Democrats.

Today's case in point: an August 28 article in the Detroit Free Press with the headline "Crucial voters group unhappy with both major party candidates".

The headline may seem to be neutral, but consider this: the GOP wins in low-turnout elections, so suppressing voter turnout -- especially of swing voters, who in this election are breaking for Kerry -- is essential for them.

They count on having more hard-cores than do the Democrats, because the Democratic far left is always prone to being poached by Nader, no matter what the Democrats do.

And the best way to suppress the Democratic vote -- aside from pulling Jeb-Bush-style shenanigans or asking Diebold to rig the machines -- is to make people cynical about it.

If swing voters really think that both parties are equally bad, that makes them stay home -- or vote for Nader.

But enough of the headline. Let's examine the story itself. Here's the first three paragraphs:

There are only about 2.6 million of them, but they could hold the future of the nation in their hands.

They are undecided voters juggling whether they'll opt for George W. Bush or John Kerry. If this year's election is as close as expected, they are likely to decide it.

These undecided voters said either man could get that nod, a new survey shows. But hear their complaints: They don't like Bush's war in Iraq, and they simply don't like Kerry. As Kurt Trachte, 47, a construction worker from St. Charles, Mo., put it: "I massively want Bush to lose, but I don't like Kerry."

Wow! Sounds like this fits in with all the recent polls that show Bush getting a tiny, within-each-poll's-margin-of-error lead for Bush, right? Right?

Several paragraphs in, we find this paragraph:

Nationally, a large Zogby/Williams poll of 20,900 voters found Kerry leads Bush by 50.8 percent to 46.7 percent among likely voters, with only 2.4 percent undecided or so soft in their support of either candidate that they could easily change. That survey had an error margin of plus or minus less than 1 percentage point."

So Kerry, in the largest sampling of American public opinion that I have personally seen -- over ten times larger even than a recent Economist poll of 1799 persons (MoE 2%) that put Kerry seven points up on Bush -- has a decent four-point lead. And according to most poll action over the past year, Kerry has held a lead of about that size for the past few months.

(Historically, if the challenger's been leading this long, he's going to win the election big-time.)

Compare this with a mid-August CBS poll, with only 165 respondents. This is less than one-one-hundredth the number of persons who responded to the Zogby/Williams poll. The CBS poll, with a ridiculously-high margin of error between 7 and 8%, might show (assuming the MoE doesn't make you utter derisive guffaws) a slight loss for Kerry among veterans because of the Swift Boat Liars -- or as some call them, the "Two Lie Crew". Or it might not.

The UK magazine The Economist -- which endorsed Bush in 2000, remember -- used 1799 respondents, over ten times as many as in the CBS poll, and has a nicely-low MoE of 2%. This poll, done before most of the debunkings of the Swifties, shows Kerry increasing his lead over Bush by three points from the previous week, to 48-41%, and also shows Bush's approval ratings down to an abysmal 39%.

The bogus CBS poll is touted by several US media twits, most notably Juan Williams (now with NPR, but still also employed by FOX News). The far-more-accurate Economist poll is ignored by the US media.

(Oh, and the polls were done at the same time, so it's not as if the CBS poll is any newer.)

Then the media goes bonkers over a Los Angeles Times poll that shows Bush with a three-point lead that is identical to the poll's margin of error.

And the razor-sharp accurate Zogby poll, the one showing Kerry with a firm lead way, way outside of the poll's margin of error, is mentioned only in the Detroit Free Press -- and then only under a supremely misleading headline.

What does this tell you?

I know what it tells me.

Dear Members of the Media:

You will notice that I have addressed this letter to multiple media outlets.

Yes, I know that this means that this will not see print (or be read on the air) in any of them.

That's not the point for me.

The point is this:

Longtime associates of George W. Bush have been out there for weeks now, telling lies about John Kerry -- blatant lies that were known to be lies from the outset. Yet their story was at first taken at face value by all the members of the print, broadcast and cable media. Even now, cable-media and broadcast-media talkers such as Judy Woodruff and Lisa Myers still invite them onto their shows, allow them to broadcast their lies, and show -- over and over again for free -- their lying, slanderous ads. And at the end of each show, the talking heads merely shake their heads and then lie themselves, saying mournfully that "the truth may never be known."

Now, we're talking about a story that, in the days of the "three-source rule", would never have been allowed to enter the media bloodstream in the first place. But then again, the media's desire to crucify Clinton sent the three-source rule packing over a decade ago. Remember the bogus rape allegations? Or the bogus Whitewater allegations? Or the bogus Wen Ho Lee accusations? Those, too, were disproved over and over again. But that didn't stop the press from reporting on them -- and then using these same bogus non-scandals (or "FauxGates", as I like to call them) as "proof" of the corrupt nature of Clinton's presidency. Meanwhile, stories on George W. Bush's military record -- or business record -- or corrupt cronyism -- didn't get a tenth, or even a hundredth, as much media play. (Full disclosure: I contribute the occasional article to American Politics Journal (http://www.apj.us), which has been a part of the Internet since before the World Wide Web existed, and so have written about all of these FauxGates in my APJ work.)

But I digress. Back to the present.

Interestingly enough, the far more truthful MoveOn.org ads that Bush's people have been attacking have not been shown over and over again for free by the TV shows purporting to discuss them. Not the way the anti-Kerry ads have been, at any rate. And none of the TV talkers has ever given the MoveOn.org ads every benefit of every doubt, the way they have O'Neill's lying ads. They automatically assume that the pro-Bush attackers are right and the MoveOn.org ads are wrong.

There is a video (here or here) of a May 27, 2004 speech made at a Kerry gathering by Ben Barnes, who was Lieutenant Governor of Texas during the latter part of the 1960s.

In this speech, which has languished for months unnoticed by the national news media, Ben Barnes -- who has already been linked to the Bush family's efforts to keep their heir and scion, George W. Bush, from being sent to Vietnam -- not only admits his role in keeping George W. stateside, but also says these hard-hitting words:

"And I tell you that for the Republicans to jump on John Kerry and say that he is not a patriot after he went to Vietnam and was shot at and fought for our freedom and came back here and protested against the war, he's a flip-flopper, let me tell you: John Kerry is a hundred-times-better patriot than George Bush or Dick Cheney."

My question is this:

Will Ben Barnes now be getting repeated invitations from people like Lisa Myers and Judy Woodruff and Juan Williams to repeat his remarks on the air? Will Mr. Barnes be given the same respectful, deferential treatment given to John O'Neill's gang of liars? Or will he be ignored, or unfairly attacked the way the MoveOn.org ads are being attacked?

This is a test of America's media entities -- which are supposed to be the guardians and the oxygen of democracy, as opposed to the guard dogs of Republicans and corporate America. But I'm not overly hopeful as to how it will turn out. As James Wolcott said recently, "Democrats always make the mistake of believing the media will be a referee and truth will prevail. It's as if they have learned nothing from Paula Jones and Whitewater."