For a better perspective, click on link and read full column.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml<snip>
"MITTELSTADT: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said that even under the time-honored tradition of politicians taking credit for everything, Gore’s statement is an “outrageous claim.”
Gore, who is widely credited for coining the term “information superhighway,” raised eyebrows with a pronouncement he made Tuesday during a CNN interview.
As we’ve seen, that last statement by Mittelstadt was wildly misleading. Gore’s “pronouncement” hadn’t “raised any eyebrows” with Blitzer, for example; Blitzer said nothing when Gore made his statement. Nor had it “raised any eyebrows” at the AP itself; on March 9 and 10, the service had filed several reports on the interview, none of which mentioned Gore’s comment. No, Gore’s “pronouncement” had only “raised eyebrows” among his Republican political rivals, several of whom Mittelstadt now quoted. For example, she quoted Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who said, “Gore taking credit for creating the Internet certainly gives new meaning to the term ‘March madness.’” The next day, the AP quoted a press release from RNC chairman Jim Nicholson. “Al Gore the father of the Internet?” he asked. Gore was “claim
credit for other people’s successes,” according to the RNC chief. (Nicholson, of course, would play the press corps for fools throughout the election. Revisit his tour of the fancy hotel. Links are provided below.)
In her influential report, Mittelstadt committed one of the press corps’ most common sins; she took an unremarkable statement by Gore and paraphrased it in the most tendentious way possible—which also happened to be the way Gore’s political rivals were spinning it. Had Gore ever claimed to be “father of the Internet?” The language didn’t appear in his statement, but it now led Mittelstadt’s AP report. And now, the press corps—having ignored Gore’s remark for two solid days—began to file excited reports uncritically adopting the GOP’s spin-points. Indeed, some of the GOP’s most tendentious language was simply adopted, word-for-word, by major members of the press. On March 11, for example, Sensenbrenner’s press release carried this headline: “DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: VICE PRESIDENT GORE TAKES CREDIT FOR CREATING THE INTERNET.” On March 12, Lou Dobbs cribbed from the statement on Moneyline, his nightly CNN program. Dobbs called Gore’s remarks “a case study tonight in delusions of grandeur,” just as Sensenbrenner had done. And Gore “apparently thinks he’s the Father of the Internet,” Dobbs said, using a key phrase from Nicholson’s statement! That’s right, kids! Dobbs took “delusions of grandeur” straight from Sensenbrenner, and “father of the Internet” straight from Nicholson; like Mittelstadt, he directly adopted the GOP’s tendentious accounts of what Gore supposedly said. But there were a few things Lou Dobbs didn’t do in his report, in which he trashed Gore for his “delusions.” He didn’t describe Gore’s important work in the Congress—and he never quoted Gore’s actual statement. But so it would go throughout this election, as RNC-scripted spinners like Dobbs ginned up nasty campaigns against Gore, confounding ideas about who runs the media. On March 11, the GOP said that Gore had “delusions of grandeur.” The next day, CNN—which said nothing about Gore’s remark in real time—went ahead and used the nasty phrase too.
But then, Dobbs’ cutting-and-pasting about the Net pointed to what was to come. In three easy steps, Gore’s completely unremarkable comment was turned into something “delusional.” First, his explicit reference to the congressional context was dropped from standard press accounts. If Gore was quoted at all, his sixteen words were pared down to eight: “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Then, eight words were whittled to three—Gore said he created the Internet (this, of course, was the formulation which led Sensenbrenner’s release). Finally, the word “invented,” which Gore never used, became the press corps’ verb of choice. All over the press corps—all over TV—citizens were told a remarkable story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet!!! The absurd presentation was in place almost instantly, with worried pundits wracking their brains about why Gore had made such a puzzling statement. Here, for example, are early passages from just one paper—that very same paper, the Washington Times, to which Gore referred last week:"
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