This post is about Clinton.

[jobycom]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore

The Press vs. Al Gore
How lazy reporting, pack journalism and GOP spin cost him the election
Posted Nov 26, 2001 12:00 AM

One month after formally kicking off his presidential campaign, Vice President Al Gore paddled down the Connecticut River in New Hampshire on July 22nd, 1999, spreading his green theme of protecting the environment and pausing for a photo op. His message was quickly drowned out, though, when the Washington Times' Bill Sammon reported that local authorities had granted Gore a special favor when they released nearly 4 billion gallons of water from a nearby dam into the drought-stricken river in order to keep the vice president's boat afloat.

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Following the lead of the Washington Times, an unabashedly conservative outlet often hostile to Democrats, the rest of the mainstream press pounced, not only upbraiding Gore for his supposed hypocrisy but also suggesting that the campaign miscue was just the latest example of a foundering presidential run. The New York Times detailed the "mishap," the Washington Post ridiculed Gore's FOUR BILLION GALLONS FOR A PHOTO OP, Newsweek dubbed it the "photo op from hell," and CNN covered the "wave of criticism after floodgates are opened on a New Hampshire river to keep Al Gore afloat."

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In retrospect, the most notable thing about the whole story was just how murky the facts were. Nobody from the Gore campaign asked for the water to be released. (Concerned about security, the Secret Service did.) As for the amount of water released, it was 500 million gallons, not 4 billion - a fact that Sammon reported a week later, long after other media ran with the original story. And the local utility company that operates the dam was already dumping millions of gallons of water into the parched Connecticut River every day. The routine release had simply been moved up a couple of hours to accommodate Gore's trip. The $7 million figure turned out to be completely inaccurate, since the water was not wasted. Instead, it passed through hydroelectric turbines and generated power that the utility company sold to other utilities.

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Two years later, Sammon defends his work, insisting that the incident makes "a point about Gore's political reflexes, to spin furiously and resort to deception."

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The coverage was at times blatantly dishonest, and, worse, reporters seemed so determined to stick to pre-assigned scripts ("Gore is a phony") that they balked at correcting obvious errors that began to circulate.

Read the rest.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. No, it's not. nt