How the Press Decides Winners
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 12, 2004; 5:50 AM
Round up the bookies: It's handicapping time again!
Joe Lieberman "desperately needs at least a third-place showing in New Hampshire Jan. 27 to survive," says the Hartford Courant. For John Kerry, a second-place finish in Iowa "would probably be enough" to keep his "hopes alive," says the Los Angeles Times, although "a strong third might even do." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution agrees that "a strong second or third in Iowa could help Kerry rebound in New Hampshire." John Edwards needs a "good finish in Iowa, a surprisingly strong finish in New Hampshire and victory in South Carolina," declares The Washington Post.
Says who? Party strategists, unnamed insiders and the journalists themselves, who, like Olympic judges, set the degree of difficulty and rule on whether the competitors have performed well enough to move on to the next round.
It's a quadrennial expectations game in which the presidential campaigns keep trying to lower the bar (to beat those all-important odds) while the press keeps it high (to winnow an unwieldy field more quickly). And it's more than just a parlor game: Those who do BTE (better than expected) reap positive headlines, which often translate into fundraising success. Those who fail are all but written off by the press, which gives them the aura of losers, which makes it hard to get coverage, which makes it all but impossible to raise campaign cash.
Who designed this crazy system, anyway?
"It's a strange habit and a self-referential habit," says Jay Rosen, chairman of New York University's journalism department, especially since "we'll find out soon enough" which candidates stumble and fall.
"The premise is that the campaign can't stand having too many candidates for too long a period, and I'm not sure that's true," Rosen says. "Why does the field have to narrow? The whole expectations game is a product of this insider culture."
Ron Faucheaux, who teaches at George Washington University's graduate school of political management, calls it "a silly game" in which journalists "create artificial benchmarks in each state."
"The media and the candidates are feeding off each other" in speculating about who needs to do what, Faucheaux says. "This second-in-this-state or third-in-that-state, that's when it really gets ridiculous."
Some of the handicapping may well turn out to be accurate. Dick Gephardt says flatly that he has to win the Iowa caucuses. Edwards, who was born in South Carolina, acknowledges that it is a must-win state for him.
But the media's emphasis on the early states is sometimes overblown. Gephardt won Iowa in 1988 and soon dropped out. George H.W. Bush won Iowa in 1980 before being routed by Ronald Reagan. Pat Buchanan won New Hampshire in 1996 and promptly imploded. And John McCain's trouncing of George W. Bush in New Hampshire last time around didn't stop Bush's march to the presidency.
Still, the handicapping questions keep coming. In a conference call last week in which Lieberman's strategists said he has to win some of the seven states voting Feb. 3, one reporter pressed on how many states Lieberman had to do well in, and how well, to avoid dropping out. "We're not going to entertain questions about what it would take to get out of the race," media adviser Mandy Grunwald finally said. "That's ridiculous."
In a CNN interview last week, Judy Woodruff asked Kerry: "Don't you need to come in at least second in Iowa?"
This is, at bottom, a backstage battle "over how to define what a victory is," as the New York Times put it last week. Case in point: Expectations for Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire are now so high that if he doesn't win big, says Salon.com, "even a victory could count as a loss."
Only in media land.
President Bush told a reporter last year that journalists were "making a huge assumption -- that you represent what the public thinks."
In the White House, Karl Rove says Bush has "a cagey respect" for the press but views it as "elitist," a bunch of people trying "to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more." And Chief of Staff Andrew Card agrees that journalists "don't represent the public any more than other people do."
The New Yorker's Ken Auletta obtained these and other revealing comments in a piece out today. Although it's no secret that this is a highly disciplined administration that holds the press at arm's length, the sweeping, even dismissive nature of some of their comments is striking. In today's cable and Internet age, says Bush media adviser Mark McKinnon, "the role and importance of the White House press corps today have diminished -- perhaps significantly."
Feelings are raw on the other side as well. "Too often they treat us with contempt," says New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller. Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank tells Auletta that the White House froze him out after he wrote such stories as "For Bush, Facts Are Malleable" in 2002. (Milbank adds, in an interview, that he was referring to not being called on at news conferences and that things have improved under spokesman Scott McClellan.)
The Post's political editor, Maralee Schwartz, tells Auletta that Rove and former White House aides Karen Hughes and Ari Fleischer all suggested Milbank was in the wrong job. Initially, she says in the piece, "there was a lot of attitude in his copy" but this "got detoxed in the editing process and Dana has come to understand his role better." Executive Editor Leonard Downie is quoted as praising Milbank's reporting.
Neo-Humor
New York Times columnist David Brooks was poking fun last week at those who see some of his friends as part of a dark "neocon cabal." He defended "the people labeled neocons (con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish')."
Brooks came to regret the religious reference in the torrent of criticism that followed, as he told Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent -- who quoted him in an e-mail that found its way to Jim Romenesko's media Web site:
"I am still on the learning curve here, and I do realize that mixture of a crack with a serious accusation was incredibly stupid on my part. Please do pass along to readers that I'm aware of how foolish I was to write the column in the way I did."
Cyberfame
First there were blogs. Then there were blogs about blogs. Then there were blogs slamming news organizations. Now Jodi Wilgoren, who covers Howard Dean for the New York Times, finds there is a blog devoted to critiquing her work.
She laughs about Wilgoren Watch (whose author remains anonymous), saying she and her fiance were among the few who signed up for updates. The fledgling site had 2,715 visitors as of last week.
"I don't think this is a big movement," Wilgoren says. "I get e-mail every day from Dean supporters who think I'm insane, and I get some very thoughtful reactions. This is a campaign filled with people on the Net voraciously communicating with each other."
BIAS WATCH
Here's my report on an utterly fascinating new poll about campaign coverage, bias and the Internet:
Americans are now evenly split over whether news organizations favor one political party or the other, with a growing number of Democrats joining a larger number of Republicans in seeing the media as biased toward the other side.
Twenty-nine percent of Democrats surveyed by the Pew Research Center say that campaign coverage is tilted toward the GOP, up from 19 percent in 2000, says a study released yesterday. Forty-two percent of Republicans see bias toward the Democrats, up from 37 percent in the last presidential campaign. Overall, 39 percent see biased reporting and 38 percent do not.
"Democrats think the media are giving President Bush a free pass," said Andrew Kohut, the center's director. "For years most of the discontent was on the Republican side, and now it's bipartisan."
Equally striking is a fundamental shift in which more Americans are turning away from the establishment media and getting their campaign fix from newer outlets. One-third now say they regularly or sometimes get political news from the Internet, a jump of nine percentage points in four years. As for people under 30, one in five say they regularly learn about the campaign from such comedy programs as Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live"-- double the level of four years ago.
Television news programs, trying to court this audience, routinely run clips of Jay Leno, David Letterman and Stewart, who was recently featured on Newsweek's cover.
The survey of 1,506 adults was not as encouraging for traditional media outlets. Pew found a significant decline in Americans who regularly get their campaign news from local television (42 percent, down from 48 percent in 2000); nightly network news (35 percent, down from 45 percent); newspapers (31 percent, down from 40 percent), and newsmagazines (10 percent, down from 15 percent). One exception was cable news networks, which are regularly consulted by 38 percent (up from 34 percent).
The greatest defections were among those under the age of 30, nearly two-thirds of whom say they are not even somewhat interested in the Democratic campaign. Only 15 percent could say which candidate served as an Army general (Wesley K. Clark) or which one was House majority leader (Richard A. Gephardt).
Major political controversies may be reaching fewer voters than campaign insiders think. Nearly six in ten of those surveyed, regardless of age, say they have heard nothing about Howard Dean's widely reported remark about appealing to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." Just 20 percent say they have seen any of the Democratic debates. Those most knowledgeable about the campaign: Internet users, National Public Radio listeners and newsmagazine readers.
After years of hype, the Web has clearly come into its own in the 2004 campaign. Nearly one in five Americans say they go online for political activity, such as researching issues and e-mailing campaigns. Dean's supporters were somewhat more likely than others, by 26 percent to 19 percent, to seek news online.
The questions about bias reveal a news audience that is increasingly fragmented along ideological lines, a far cry from the days when nearly everyone watched the three major networks. Majorities did not see bias in the early stages of the 1988 and 1996 campaigns.
Four in 10 Democrats--but only a quarter of Republicans--cite CBS, NBC and ABC as their main source of campaign news. Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats rely primarily on Fox News for their political information (29 percent to 14 percent), while CNN is favored by 27 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of Republicans. One-fifth of Republicans, but only 12 percent of Democrats, turn mainly to radio, where talk shows are dominated by conservatives.
Another sign: Fox viewers are much more likely to see a great deal of bias in press coverage than viewers of CNN, network news or local TV news.
The more ideological people are, the more likely they are to feel strongly about media bias. Conservatives Republicans, by a 47 percent to 8 percent margin, say the press leans toward Democrats, while liberal Democrats, by 36 percent to 11 percent, say coverage tilts the other way.
Still, two-thirds of those questioned say they prefer news from outlets without a political point of view, while one-quarter favors news that reflect their views.
Before we move on, if you're interested in journalistic ethics, you may want to check out the latest twists in the investigation that led USA Today's Jack Kelley to resign. And the way that Indianapolis-bound sportswriter Mike Freeman lost his job is just sad.
Dean now has the trifecta--a U.S. News cover to follow last week's Time/Newsweek splash. Roger Simon has campaign chief Joe Trippi quoting Dean as saying in his long-shot days: "Hey, I'm not going to win anyway," so that he could take lots of risks.
"And in a 10-page, single-spaced confidential memo written by Trippi and other staffers to Dean on June 11 last year, shortly before his formal announcement, Dean was urged not to be just another typical candidate 'who has a healthcare plan' but to become a 'transformational leader that rises to the historical moment and leads a movement to save and restore America's ideals.'
"The memo says: 'This is not about issues. It is about values. This is not about differences in healthcare plans, tax cuts, or Social Security. It's about a fight for our values and our country, who owns it and who runs it . . . . This is not Sgt. Pepper's Magical Mystery Tour. This is Howard Dean's Magical History Tour of the Greatest Nation on this Earth...
"'You are by definition the classic outsider,' the memo says. 'But think about the fear and anger you have engendered from the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist think tank], the other candidates, and many in the Washington establishment. They are not afraid you are George McGovern or Jerry Brown. No, what they are afraid of is that you are Jimmy Carter.'"
Dean scores well among Democrats in the latest Newsweek poll, but there are warning signs if he wins the nomination:
"Dean may have a struggle on his hands when it comes to appealing to the electorate at large. Cast as an almost polar opposite to Bush, the anti-war Dean is perceived by 43 percent of all voters as too liberal to defeat the 'compassionate conservative' in the White House. Almost half (44 percent) consider him too hotheaded and undiplomatic while 33 percent interpret his temperament as passion for the issues."
Will this Des Moines Register endorsement give John Edwards a bump? "The more we watched him, the more we read his speeches and studied his positions, the more we saw him comport himself in debate, the more we learned about his life story, the more our editorial board came to conclude he's a cut above the others.
"John Edwards is one of those rare, naturally gifted politicians who doesn't need a long record of public service to inspire confidence in his abilities. His life has been one of accomplishing the unexpected, amid flashes of brilliance."
How long before the editorial gets used in an Edwards ad? Do you have a stopwatch?
National Review's Rich Lowry reports from New Hampshire that the Clark boomlet may be real:
"Something is happening here, and it's going to be magnified by reporters eager to tout the hot new thing now that Howard Dean seems so last news cycle.
"By any measure, what Clark has managed has been impressive. He hasn't quite gone from 0 to 60 as candidate, but at least from 0 to 45. He seems able to answer every kind of question credibly, and occasionally gets off fairly passionate applause lines. He doesn't have the magic of John McCain here in 2000, but some lifetime politicians will never achieve the level of proficiency Clark has attained. He is already, arguably, a better campaigner than John Kerry."
How glamorous is the campaign trail? Slate's Chris Suellentrop, following Wes Clark, gives us a taste:
"After the tedium of watching a man deliver the same speech over and over and over again, watching him try on a sweater feels like entertainment...
"Some reporters plead with Clark to allow them to watch him go swimming the next morning...He swam two legs in a medley relay race for his state-championship swimming team in high school. (In a related subject, the 59-year-old Clark appears quite dashing to some women. One reporter says some older women told her he was 'eye candy.' Polls show that Howard Dean has much greater support among women than Clark does, but for sheer physical attractiveness, at least some women seem to think that it's Clark, not John Edwards, who's the matinee idol among the Democratic candidates.)
"Clark sounds open to having reporters watch him swim, but he doesn't want any cameras to witness the event. When nearly everything you do gets caught on tape, maybe you need just a little time alone. Or maybe Clark's just tired of modeling for the press. As he put it, 'No beefcake.'"
Not that the thought would have crossed anyone's mind.
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