Krugman: Swagger vs. Substance (How media will spin * victory)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.

Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.

But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore's sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush's lies - "against the other's minor errors."

The result of this emphasis on the candidates' acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush's defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.

[Melodybe]

1. Good one to print out, thanks rmpalmer.

[bagnana]

2. wow. Once again he nails it.

I don't think I can bear to watch the debates. Bush is so annoying to watch, and the pundits' spinning drives me batty. Together, I end up yelling at the television more than watching it.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[tom_paine]

4. Krugman unmasks Imperial Pravda

Without QUESTION. Absolutely, positively, JOE STALIN-level certainty that the Cable Pravda Whores will annoint Bunnypants* winner REGARDLESS of what happens.

The cretainty of the Orwellian Unreality, the Totalitarian State, a group to which Imperial Amerika now technically belongs, and which will more outrightly belong if the Imperial Family retains power.

[ericdf]

5. Pre-emptive email/letter writing campaign

I think we should collectively and preemptively demand that the NYT and other major media outlets not repeat this mistake. Write to a newspaper now and cite the Krugman article. Ask them to keep their front-page coverage focused on the facts and any attempts to distort them. Insist that they bury the "drama criticism" inside the paper. We deserve better.

[Cocoa]

7. great idea

excellent idea. Let the media know we remember what they did last time, and we're expecting them to do it again. Some will be too ashamed to do it.

[SteppingRazor]

6. Can I plug my debate story again?

As long as we're on the debate subject, I wrote a story on debates for the weekly I work for:

http://www.southflorida.com/citylink/sfe-cl-coverhistory.story

There's more on the debates, starting here:

http://www.southflorida.com/citylink/sfe-cl-cover.story


Hope y'all like it. I'm usually a music journalist, so this was new territory for me. Haven't written on politics since Bob Graham dropped out of the primaries.

[patdem]

8. Dan Sweeny...thanks that was VERY interesting and educational

all at once. Have I seen you in hear before?? :hi:

[RamboLiberal]

9. TPM on Krugman's points - media already spinning Repug points.

Paul Krugman today touches on a crucially important point about Thursday night's presidential debate. If 2000 was any indication -- and there's every reason to think it is -- the winner of the debate won't be determined during the 90 minute encounter itself but during the spin war that will follow it. And with the advantage the Republicans have on the cable nets, talk radio and chat TV shows, the odds are stacked in their favor.

(As Krugman alludes to, the initial public reactions to the first Bush/Gore debate had the then-veep coming out on top, if narrowly. It was only after several days of pundit churn that Bush became the winner. The Bush team won the post-debate debate.)

More than just these built-in advantages, though, Democrats, I think, have seldom really appreciated that there is such a thing as a post-debate debate. I don't mean that they don't know about putting out surrogates or trying to spin the results. Of course, they do. But in 2000 at least (a certainly in analogous situations in this cycle) the effort was very reactive and scattershot. And that inevitably leaves the Democrats trying to parry or deconstruct the ways that Republicans are trying to define what happened. In that way, they're fighting at best for a draw.

Republicans are already leaking hints and taunts about whether Kerry will sweat profusely under the lights, whether he's too tanned and other similar nonsense. But the antic nature of these taunts doesn't mean they won't be effective. They're meant to throw the other side off balance and, in a related manner, to provide grist for a catty and frivolous press corps.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003525.php