August 2004 Archive

My main result is that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some watchdog aspects, in that during the presidential campaign it gives more emphasis to Democratic topics, but only so when the incumbent president is a Republican. This set of Democratic topics comprises stories about civil rights, health care, labor and emloyment, and social welfare. In fact, controlling for seasonal effects and a deterministic time trend, I find that the New York Times, if the incumbent president is a Republican, increases the frequency of stories about Democratic topics when the presidential campaign kicks in. Such effect is quite sizeable in relative terms: when the incumbent president is a Republican, there are 26 percent more stories about Democratic issues during the three months of the campaign than outside of it. On the contrary, if the incumbent president is a Democrat, the partisan effect and watchdog effect almost cancel each other, so that there is no discernible change in the count of Democratic stories when the presidential campaign kicks in.

Regarding the issue balance of stories out of the presidential campaign, I find that the New York Times devotes more space to Democratic issues, when the incumbent president is a Democrat. It is however unclear whether or not this finding is due to the fact that Democratic presidents dedicate more time and effort to the owned issues, as compared with Republican ones, and the New York Times is simply reflecting this fact through its editorial choices.

HELLO GASTON: At my house in Cary, NC, we have about two inches of rain so far from Tropical Storm Gaston.

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The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is reelected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy.

Spinsanity has documented Mr. Krauthammer's history of ascribing mental illness to those he disagrees with.

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There is the Bill O'Reilly method, which is to abandon independent thinking and simply come out in the middle, irrespective of where the two sides are. In response to Newt Gingrich's remark that the Swift Boat Veterans' independent ads were "the conservative movement's answer to Michael Moore," O'Reilly said, "I don't want either of them."

In Nazi Germany, O'Reilly would have condemned both Hitler's death camps and the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In Bill O'Reilly's world, King Solomon would have actually cut the disputed baby in half.

The O'Reilly method of analysis works well about once a century. The last time was when Hitler invaded Russia in 1941.

BOOK PARTY: Mr. Cox also dropped in last week on a book release party for the Spinsanity guys. He has pictures. The links don't seem to be working, so just go to the main page and scroll down.

UPDATE: Robert Cox e-mails with a link to the Spinsanity book party article. He's just finished switching everything to a Movable Type page.

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Mr. Dobbs makes a curious stand-in as a devout middle-class crusader, but in the past year he has woven a new story: that of a Harvard-educated business journalist turned fiery populist who has become a champion of the American worker. And people seem to be buying it: His ratings are up 19 percent in total viewership from last year. Earlier this spring, The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote that Mr. Dobbs was running his show "as if he were doing talk radio at 2 a.m. in Youngstown." An editorial in The Economist trilled that Mr. Dobbs greeted "every announcement of lost jobs as akin to a terrorist assault." John Castellani, the president of the Business Roundtable, a C.E.O. lobbying group, dubbed Mr. Dobbs' anti-outsourcing campaign "a jihad."

Mr. Dobbs in turn criticizes the WSJ editorial page as ideologues:

As for the claims that he's just hunting for more viewers with his populist stance, Mr. Dobbs bristles.

"This is madness. This is not intelligence, this is not rational, and this is not American," he said. "The Wall Street Journal, in my opinion, is a wonderful organization, but on the editorial side they are ideologues, and that adherence to ideology has primacy over openness and dialogue. It's not unexpected. But it's a shame that important voices will not be open and analyze the reality.

"Look, I love international trade," he continued. "I love India so much I've taken my family there on vacation. The fact is, does one transfer a job to a foreign country to provide services and products to the home market? The answer is no. This is the first time it's ever been attempted, and it's idiotic.

THE MAUREEN DOWD PUZZLE: I've always been baffled by the dominance of Maureen Dowd in my site statistics. After the home page, Ms. Dowd's page is by far the most visited. I really don't talk about Maureen Dowd that often, except to note that she's clearly not very partisan. Discussions involving Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman usually dominate my e-mail, but their pages are not nearly as popular. The top five search strings which led visitors to Lying in Ponds this month were "maureen dowd" (420), "ponds" (98), "maureen dowd clinton" (81), "maureen dowd bushworld" (24) and "maureen dowd reagan" (24).

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But our young Eddie Haskell managed to annoy other servicemen even before he came home and called them war criminals. About 60 eyewitnesses to Kerry's service are cited in the book, describing Kerry fleeing comrades who were under attack, disregarding orders, putting others in danger, sucking up to his commanders, creating phony film footage of his exploits with a home-movie camera, and recommending himself for medals and Purple Hearts in vainglorious reports he wrote himself. (This was apparently before the concept of "fragging" put limits on such behavior.)

Completely beyond the bounds of civil political discourse.

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TAIL-GUNNER BILL: "All right--to be continued," Tim Russert said, at the end of the hour-long program. But was that a threat or a promise? Russert had just concluded an appalling session of his weekly CNBC program--a session in which his guest, Bill O'Reilly, showed the world what's wrong with the devolving American discourse. O'Reilly appeared with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman--and Russert ought to be disturbed by what occurred on his show. O'Reilly name-called freely; made blatant false statements; and generally blustered and bullied throughout. The problems with "democratization of media" were on display throughout the hour. Inexplicably, Russert was eager to sign up for more when the session was done.

I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election. (Every four years everyone says "this is the most important election of my lifetime," but this year I believe it is true.) I'm going to give whatever advice and encouragement I have in terms of strategy, approach, message--I hate that word--and issues. No one has asked me to do this, and I do it as a volunteer, not for a salary but simply to give my time to help what I think is the more helpful side. This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now.

Ms. Noonan had previously worked for Ronald Reagan. Some other columnists have a similar history of working directly for party politicians -- Linda Chavez, Tony Blankley, etc. A natural question to ask is whether former partisan operatives tend to write partisan columns. I would say that the evidence over the past three years suggests that there's very little correlation between an explicitly partisan past and partisan punditry. Looking at the current rankings, Ms. Chavez and Mr. Blankley are in or near the Top Ten, but George Will and William Safire are near the bottom. The most extreme partisans in the rankings haven't held political jobs as far as I know. My conclusion is that when it comes to partisanship, the proof is in the pudding.

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RASPBERRY WINS FOURTH ESTATE AWARD: Washington Post columnist William Raspberry has been selected to receive the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award (link via Romensko):

Raspberry's work earned him a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary as well as the National Association of Black Journalists' Lifetime Achievement Award that same year.

He began his newspaper career in 1956 at the Indianapolis Recorder where he worked as a reporter, photographer and editor. He joined the Washington Post in 1962 after serving two years in Army. At the Post, he was hired as a teletype operator and quickly advanced to general assignment reporter, copy editor and assistant city editor.

His coverage of the 1965 Watts riot in Los Angeles earned him the Capital Press Club's Journalist of the Year award. His work since has focused on improving human relations with coverage of such wide-ranging issues as education, criminal justice and housing.

Raspberry's commentary now appears in more than 200 newspapers through the Washington Post Writers Group. He consistently addresses the latest ideas and proposals for answers to social dilemmas.

In 1997, Raspberry was named one of the top 50 most influential journalists in the national press corps by Washingtonian magazine. Raspberry is among "but a handful of journalists with the power to introduce new ideas and give them currency," the magazine said.

Here's a list of past winners (PDF file). Most of the attention of this web site is devoted to the most partisan columnists, but William Raspberry is one of the very best, thoughtful and non-partisan.

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All the President's Spin, the first book from the editors of the acclaimed nonpartisan website Spinsanity, unmasks the tactics of deception and media manipulation that George W. Bush has used to sell his agenda to the American people.

From his campaigns for tax cuts to the debate over war in Iraq, President Bush has employed an unprecedented onslaught of half-truths and strategically ambiguous language to twist and distort the facts. Fritz, Keefer, and Nyhan's powerful critique of Bush's record of policy deception explains why the media has failed to hold him accountable and demonstrates the threat these tactics pose to honest political debate.

This is the essential book for every citizen who wants to understand how George W. Bush has misled the nation and why, if left unchallenged, all the President's spin could soon become standard practice -- a devastating development for our democracy.

I expect it to be outstanding and nonpartisan, as all of their work has been.

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Despite the setup, Krugman is clearly intending for readers to take these as serious accusations against the President. And by accusing Bush of outright indifference or sinister motives, he goes beyond any semblance of reasonable argument. Instead of arguing that the Bush administration's planning for post-invasion Iraq was inadequate or incorrect, he claims it was non-existent. Similarly, he states that the President actively allowed the looting of Iraq, instead of failing to prevent it. And though he has no access to the evidence behind them, Krugman claims that terror warnings are "obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news."

The accusations may be true, but it's also possible that Bush planned for post-war Iraq but did so inadequately; wanted to stop looting in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's government fell; and has simply issued terror warnings when warranted by intelligence. Krugman doesn't know what's going on in Bush's head or what the counter-terrorism intelligence is. His accusations are simply irresponsible speculation regardless of the hypothetical conceit.

• After some uncharacteristic recent criticism of Republicans, and after her USA Today controversy, Ann Coulter stormed back into the lead in the partisanship rankings with two columns on the Democratic National Convention in which she charmingly referred to Democrats as "the Spawn of Satan" and "America-hating".
• Strong John Kerry supporter Thomas Oliphant showed independence by going the other way in his reaction to Kerry's convention speech.
• Thomas Sowell with his column and Harold Meyerson with his column on John Kerry's speech did nothing to disturb their positions at the top and bottom of the Kerry Index.

PRO-LIFE BILL: In yesterday's Wall Street Journal On the Editorial Page article about pro-life Democrats, this paragraph jumped out at me:

Carol Crossed, the New Yorker who's president of Democrats for Life, expresses a similar view: "I think the party needs to come back to its principles and stand for the oppressed." Thomas Finneran, speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, puts it another way: "The Democratic Party used to stand for the weak, the defenseless, the marginalized," he says. "If we don't stand for the unborn, who will?" "Democrats should be for the underdog," says Jim Gluba, who's running for Congress from Iowa. "When you abandon your principles, you lose elections."

What caught my attention is that it should be Bill Gluba instead of Jim Gluba who is running for Congress in Iowa. The reason I happen to know that is because Bill Gluba is actually my father's cousin; Gluba is my grandmother's maiden name. I've never met him, but I heard about him during my recent visit to the extended family in Illinois.

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