Gene Lyons: "Media Complicit in Political Truth-Shading" Great read!

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.nwanews.com/story_print.php?paper=adg&Editorial=section&storyid=95441

Media complicit in political truth-shading

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/story/adg/95441

Most people assume that all politicians shade the truth.

Most people are right. Seeking bipartisan symmetry, journalists assume that the exaggerations and misstatements split roughly down the middle, with each party in our fallen world of Democrats and Republicans vending pleasing fictions to supporters. The idea of "balance" makes life easier for reporters two ways, allowing them to pose as morally superior to quibbling politicians while shielding them from accusations of partisanship, particularly the dread "liberal bias." But what if, as Huck Finn might have said, it just ain’t so? What if one party addresses voters in ordinary politician-speak while the other abandons truth-telling altogether? Because that’s what’s happening during the 2004 campaign. Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards apply standard spin to their formulations for the nation’s future while their Republican rivals have dragged political discourse to unprecedented depths of mendacity. Only weeks before the election, the Bush/Cheney campaign resembles a gigantic lab experiment designed to measure exactly how poorly informed and gullible the American people are. Journalists trying to act as neutral observers are having a hard time figuring out how to deal with it.

During the vice-presidential debate, for example, Dick Cheney accused Edwards of being a no-show in the U.S. Senate. "I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session," Cheney said dismissively. "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."

It was a palpable hit, the authoritative older man dismissing his rival as a feckless puppy. Except that it was not true. Cheney presided over the Senate exactly twice in four years. Within an hour of the vice president’s statement, photos of Cheney and Edwards together at a Washington prayer breakfast were all over the Internet. Edwards also had escorted Sen. Liddy Dole, R-N. C., to be sworn in by Cheney. The two men once appeared on the same "Meet the Press" broadcast.

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[idaholeft]

1. Spin

Yup - Democrats spin the truth, republicans spin their own lies.