Trailing in the Media Primary, Too
Dean's Hot-and-Cold Press Coverage Sparks Debate Over Objectivity
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page A01
Howard Dean rode a huge wave of favorable media coverage to the top of the Democratic presidential heap, only to falter because of his own mistakes.
Or: Howard Dean built a remarkable national following on his own but was wounded by a barrage of media attacks fueled by disdainful journalists.
Which of these assessments is right is a matter of fierce debate, especially now that Dean has lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. What is clear is that he remains a media obsession whose rise and abrupt decline has been accelerated by the breakneck pace of today's news culture.
As the New York Daily News banner headline put it yesterday: "KERRY WINS . . . AND DEAN BEHAVES!"
John Kerry may be the front-runner, political analysts say, but Dean is the story. He's the story when reporters see him as angry and he's the story when he is suddenly subdued. He's the story after a rant in Iowa and the story when he mocks himself about it. He's the story when he insists he won't use his wife as a political prop and the story when he and Judy Dean sit for interviews with Diane Sawyer, Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews.
"Without question, the Washington media descended unfairly on Dean -- both because he was the front-runner and because he's leading a movement that's hostile to their insider culture," said Yale historian David Greenberg, author of the book "Nixon's Shadow." "They turned the 'scream' from an amusing if slightly weird sidelight into a four-day front-page story that may seriously damage his chances."
But Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia's journalism school, said: "I'm not buying into the notion that the media made him and the media destroyed him, all before a single vote was cast. Actual phenomena happened in the world that made him a story, rather than the press."
Dean's 12-point loss in New Hampshire on Tuesday was a "lifeline" (Chicago Tribune) or "a far-off second" (Los Angeles Times), a finish "well enough to keep his hopes alive" (Philadelphia Inquirer) or leaving him "a badly damaged candidate" (Washington Times). On the cable networks, which gave Dean's speech nearly twice as much time as Kerry's, Fox's Fred Barnes and MSNBC's Pat Buchanan all but wrote Dean off.
"I can't imagine where he's going to win," Barnes said. While he wrongly predicted that Dean would win Iowa, he said, "you learn by reporting."
Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Barabak said he avoided adjectives like "disappointing" in describing Dean's showing. "The insta-pundits on TV had the race buttoned up and over for Howard Dean three weeks ago and now have the race buttoned up and over for John Kerry. All the geniuses were wrong."
Dean, meanwhile, has been taking on the Fourth Estate, telling CNN on Monday: "Every media organ and reporter went after us because, you know, take down the front-runner. . . . You create the news." Aides say the media have recycled old stories, taken quotes out of context and unfairly psychoanalyzed the doctor.
Front-runners, of course, get put under a far more powerful media microscope than their lagging rivals, as briefly happened to Kerry when he was seen as leading the field early last year. And in today's news universe, stories, allegations and gossip bounce from Web site to BlackBerry and back again while being replayed in an endless cable network loop.
When Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980, there were two news cycles a day, morning papers and evening newscasts. CNN was five months old. There were no satellite phones, no USA Today, no Fox News Channel, no CNBC, no Comedy Central, no Weekly Standard, no Rush Limbaugh show, no Slate, no Salon, no Google, no Drudge Report. Now campaign stories change hour by hour.
"The echo chamber is much bigger -- past the speed of sound and toward the speed of light," said Democratic consultant Jenny Backus. "You live by the Internet and die by the Internet. The very same tools that helped bring Dean up can bring him down."
Indeed, the Internet, where Dean galvanized so much support, has now spawned sites like DeanGoesNuts.com, which offers musical remixes of the candidate's high-decibel Iowa concession speech.
Should that speech have been replayed, as Dean put it, "673 times in one week"? "He was vulnerable to it because he had a reputation as a guy who flew off the handle," said Bob Zelnick, a former ABC correspondent who heads Boston University's journalism department. "If the same thing had happened to John Kerry or John Edwards, it would have been less damaging.
"But the same media that played the 'I Have a Scream' speech time and again also gave him the opportunity to come back on the David Letterman show and in the Diane Sawyer interview."
Fox News Senior Vice President John Moody said of television's handling of the Iowa videotape: "I don't think we overplayed it a scintilla more than we did Michael Jackson hanging the kid over a balcony. It was what everyone, from Jay Leno to the guy sitting next to me on the bus, was talking about. It was the story of the moment, like Saddam with his beard."
The man from Vermont, initially dismissed as an obscure small-state governor, was trumpeted by the press as early as November as "threatening to pull away from the pack," as The Washington Post put it. While Time and Newsweek traditionally put the New Hampshire winner on the cover, Dean got the cover treatment from each magazine -- twice -- before anyone had voted.
"He was clearly a phenomenon," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said of the first cover story, in August. "The fact that this insurgent candidate could be ahead in fundraising and generating support on the Internet was a fascinating story." The headline: "Destiny or Disaster?" Time went with "Is Dean for Real?"
But Dean's front-runner status also produced a wealth of negative headlines, investigative pieces and critical punditry: He invoked the Confederate flag. He played down Saddam Hussein's arrest. He wouldn't prejudge Osama bin Laden. He refused to release his Vermont records. He went skiing after flunking his draft physical. One of his tax breaks went to Enron. He doesn't talk about religion. He seems angry. And why won't he campaign with his wife?
At first, the negative publicity had little impact, which in turn produced stories about Dean's Teflon coating. In a classic instance, when Dean had a rocky outing on "Meet the Press" last year, his online donations soared.
"A lot of people rally to a candidate when they feel he's being persecuted unfairly by the media," said Yale's Greenberg. "The anti-Washington sentiment in the country includes a lot of anti-Tim Russert, anti-Chris Matthews sentiment."
Dean got so much attention for so many months -- from a cameo appearance on HBO's "K Street" to a bylined piece in Vanity Fair to the cover of Rolling Stone -- that he began to seem like the establishment candidate, especially when Al Gore embraced him. During 2003, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Dean got more than twice as much coverage as Kerry on the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news, and more than three times as much as Dick Gephardt and John Edwards. That had its downside.
"Voters don't like to be told by Time magazine and Newsweek who the front-runner is -- they get to choose that themselves," Dean told the New York Times.
Political journalists said in interviews that previously obscure presidential candidates -- Carter and Bill Clinton are often mentioned -- tend to get more skeptical coverage at first because they are unknown quantities, both to the public and the national press corps. Clinton was hammered in 1992, particularly by the New York tabloids, but also got a sympathetic hearing by courting such high-profile political writers as Joe Klein.
But even when Dean was riding high, he made little effort to charm his chroniclers. The candidate is not big on small talk and, with his Park Avenue upbringing, never served up a personal narrative (unlike Edwards's son-of-a-millworker refrain and Kerry's Vietnam heroism). There were no warm-and-fuzzy features about his family life -- until he belatedly produced his wife for a People spread this month. The campaign became so determined to showcase Judy Dean that she joined her husband for the final New Hampshire swing and aides distributed thousands of videotapes of their interview with ABC's Sawyer.
Marc Sandalow of the San Francisco Chronicle said Dean was "abrupt" and cut short a 15-minute interview when he didn't like the questions. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said Dean never called for a promised five-minute interview, "which left me five minutes to think about why his candidacy was sputtering." Roger Simon of U.S. News & World Report wrote that Dean was "not likable."
"The Washington press corps can do the most amazing imitation of a clique of snotty high school kids," wrote Texas columnist Molly Ivins, "and they were determined to find that Dean was not good enough for their clique from the beginning."
That is one of the dominant themes on the Dean campaign's blog, as MSNBC.com noted. "This whole Dean is angry thing is media spin," one reader complained. Said another: "WE have to work harder than ever to get the truth out, because the media is spinning this ANTI DEAN all the way!"
By January, said Newsweek and NBC commentator Jonathan Alter, Dean "became a piñata. In politics you have to think before you open your yap." At the same time, Alter said, "the binge-purge media digestive system means that everyone processes stories in a bigger and faster way. It's kind of like eating a big meal -- the media gets more bloated but also starts looking out for its next meal faster."
Some political operatives view the process as constructive. "A front-runner has to withstand a lot of scrutiny, and he said a lot of stupid things for three or four weeks in a row," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "If you can't manage yourself as a candidate, it doesn't bode well for the next four years as president."
After Dean's Tuesday concession speech, according to ABC News, a reporter asked campaign manager Joe Trippi what happened in New Hampshire. "I'm not talking to you," said Trippi, hours before resigning from the campaign. Why? "Because the media is a pain in the [butt]." |
