Monday, October 18, 2004
Different standards of truth
In the Washington Post today, Howard Kurtz writes,
In articles, columns and one internal ABC News memo, some journalists have argued that the president has engaged in far more serious distortions than John Kerry has, and that media outlets should blow the whistle on these falsehoods.
"Your instinct is that if we say bad things about one side you have to say bad things about the other side," says Adam Nagourney, the New York Times's chief political reporter. "You want to give equal scrutiny to both sides, but I don't think you should impose a false equivalence that doesn't exist."
All you have to do to confirm that the media goes easy on the sitting president and tries to match falsehood to falsehood is to read analysis of the debates. In the Washington Post's analysis of the VP debate, this Edwards misstatement was deemed worthy of mention:
Edwards also asserted that "the president is proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that is completely unnecessary." But Bush simply endorsed such an amendment that had already been introduced on Capitol Hill.
In the 3rd Presidential Debate, Bush Jr asserted the same thing,
I proposed a constitutional amendment.
Did the WP call him on that? No, and no.
// posted by Erik @ 10/18/2004 03:06:00 PM
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