Matthews: Rather "Nothing Like the Portrait
Painted...by Critics"
"Dan is nothing like the portrait painted and believed in by critics," MSNBC's Chris Matthews insisted in a eulogy to Dan Rather delivered over the weekend on his syndicated Chris Matthews Show. Matthews contended: "Dan Rather's a hard-charging journalist who has tangled with big shots, Washington insiders who love nothing so much as the closed door. For pounding on that door with all his being, Dan Rather will be remembered when many of the rest of us are long forgotten."
Matthews, the MRC's Geoff Dickens observed, ended the March 13 Chris Matthews Show with the tribute to Rather.
Over the matching scene from the movie, Matthews began:
"There's a great scene in All the President's Men when Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post, played by Jason Robards, raps his knuckle on a desk he's passing. He's got the story. He's nailed it. That moment of truth is to the journalist, what a fix is to the addict. But don't think that's the only motive in this business. There's the competition to be first, a David-and-Goliath attitude toward big-shot secret keepers, and sometimes, and this can be dangerous for a reporter, an underlying sense of how things should be. Dan Rather, who just stepped down from the CBS anchor desk, has spent decades as a reporter very much in the arena. With that, he's taken his knocks, some of them deserved.
"What he deserves right now is some straight reporting about himself. In my experience, Dan is nothing like the portrait painted and believed in by critics. Comfortable among the elite? Not even close. Dan is like those Southern boys who come north to play for some big-league city like New York or Philly but are country boys to the last inning of their last game. Twenty years ago, sitting in his office, Dan glowed with pride about the producers he got to work with. Maybe that confidence was his nemesis at the end. Rather was stretched too thin on too many shows, on the air too many hours. But that's not the big story. Dan Rather's a hard-charging journalist who has tangled with big shots, Washington insiders who love nothing so much as the closed door. For pounding on that door with all his being, Dan Rather will be remembered when many of the rest of us are long forgotten."
Bury or Ignore Finding Media Three Times
Negative on W Than Kerry
A study released Sunday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an outfit respected by the mainstream media, determined that across broadcast network newscasts, the cable news networks and major newspapers, "campaign coverage that focused on Bush was three times as negative as coverage of Kerry (36% versus 12%). It was also less likely to be positive (20% positive Bush stories, 30% for Kerry)." Yet, you would have been hard-pressed Monday to notice that finding in stories on the study. "On Fox News, No Shortage of Opinion, Study Finds," read the headline over a Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz who in more than 1,100 words found no space for the campaign coverage analysis. Other stories noted the bias against Bush over Kerry, but led with other aspects of the report. "Iraq Coverage Wasn't Biased," announced the headline over the AP dispatch. USA Today's headline: "Non-traditional media gain ground, consumers." The New York Times: "Fewer Sources Go Nameless in the Press, Survey Shows." Los Angeles Times: "Study Warns of Junk-News Diet."
Reuters, however, highlighted the campaign bias: "Study Shows U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush," declared the headline over the March 14 piece by New York-based correspondent Claudia Parsons. She led her story:
"U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.
"The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.
"Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"The study looked at 16 newspapers of varying size across the country, four nightly newscasts, three network morning news shows, nine cable programs and nine Web sites through the course of 2004....
For the article in full: www.reuters.com
The study found a decided bias against Bush but, nonetheless, the "State of the Media 2004" report features a section titled, "Press Going Too Easy on Bush: Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists." See: stateofthemedia.com
That part of the report is actually just a recitation of a May 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: people-press.org
At the time, the May 24 CyberAlert documented the hypocrisy of the surveyed journalists:
Journalists at national media outlets are more liberal and less conservative than nine years ago, and while in 1995 they were upset that the media were too critical of President Clinton, they are now disturbed that the media are going too easy on President Bush, a just-released survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found. Five times more national outlet journalists identify themselves as liberal, 34 percent, than conservative, a mere 7 percent. The poll also discovered that while the reporters, editors, producers and executives have a great deal of trouble naming a "liberal" news outlet, they had no problem seeing a "conservative" outlet, with an incredible 69 percent readily naming the Fox News Channel.
A mere 8 percent of the national press believe the media are being "too critical" of President Bush, compared to nearly seven times as many, 55 percent, who think the media are "not critical enough." Back in 1995, as recounted in the MRC's June, 1995 edition of MediaWatch, Times Mirror determined that just two percent thought the press had given "too much" coverage to Clinton administration achievements, compared to 48 percent to saw "too little" on Clinton's achievements. The remaining 49 percent called coverage "about right."
See: www.mediaresearch.org
The whole Project for Excellence in Journalism report, which consumes about 600 pages, is a hodge-podge of different studies conducted by different sets of researchers. Far from comprehensive, on the campaign study, for instance, the researchers picked just a few select dates to study.
For the home page for the report: stateofthemedia.com
For the PDF of the executive summary: stateofthemedia.com
For an overview of the findings in the "content analysis" section: stateofthemedia.com
For Kurtz's March 14 story without any mention of the campaign bias: www.washingtonpost.com
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