Election Countdown, 32 Days to Go: Two Contrasting Front Pages.
‘See things steady and see them whole.’ That's what the press is supposed to do. That's not what we are getting.
The front page of the New York Times on October 29, 2016. (Red highlighting added, by me.)
This post consists of two images. I will mostly let them speak for themselves.
The image at the top of this post is the front page of the New York Times ten days before the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton election of 2016. The news that dominated the “above the fold” territory on that page, with a big photo and three separate stories, is something that deserved to be at most an asterisk in history. That was Jamey Comey’s announcement that leaked Clinton emails had been found on Rep. Anthony Weiner’s cell phone laptop. Not long afterwards, the importance of this finding was determined to be nil.
The only reason the Comey-Weiner episode is more than an asterisk in history is that last-minute saturation coverage of it, exemplified by this NYT front page, could well have made the difference in tipping the 2016 election toward Donald Trump.
To the best of my awareness, no one in a position of responsibility at the New York Times has ever taken responsibility for, or answered questions about, the thinking behind this coverage.
The image below is the front page of the New York Times this morning. This is the first morning’s paper since bombshell revelations yesterday, from special counsel Jack Smith’s pleadings to the DC Federal Court. In substantive importance, Smith’s filing can best be compared to Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes.
See if you can detect any slight difference in the two stories’ prominence and play.
NYT front page, October 3, 2024.
Why did the NYT play the first story the way it did? We don’t know. They won’t say.
Why did it play the second story so differently? We don’t know. They won’t say.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is one thing. The attitude of our leading journalists boils down to: “You can ask. We won’t tell.”
This is not good enough.
I'm still in shock about all the coverage (not just at the Times ) that claims that Vance "won" the debate. Since when is lying in almost every answer "winning" a debate? I'd call it running away from a debate. How low have we sunk here. He didn't answer the questions and whatever answers he gave were mostly lies.
But I want to take it a step further and also complain about Ross Douthat's appalling column that showed up halfway through the debate where he claimed that Vance blew Walz away. No apologies today as far as I can tell about rushing off to bed instead of honestly reporting Vance's complete meltdown at the end. All this may be par for the course these days but here's what I still find hard to comprehend. Douthat is the Time's resident conservative Christian as a convert to traditionalist Catholicism. Vance is his friend and co-religionist and also a convert. I spent many years teaching at a Jesuit university. I am not Catholic and certainly don't agree with a lot of Catholic theology. But there are two things I admired all the years I was there: an emphasis on honesty and an emphasis on serving the poor and immigrant communities in a way that honors them as decent human beings. How can a professed Catholic smear immigrant communities the way Vance does which is nothing but full on hatred and lies and how can Douthat admire a man of such hatred and say that he "won" a debate in which almost every question was treated as an opportunity to trash immigrants? Why is this man still a columnist at the Times?
There was one bright light, though, at the Times today and that was Masha Gessen's column. She nailed it.
Jim The placement of stories, especially headlines, can have a major impact on ‘readers’ who simply scan the news. Since I no longer watch cable news, I have no personal opinion on daily shows.
What strikes me about media coverage of the presidential election is the focus on spot news rather then a sharp focus on character which, for me as a 90-year-old, is critical for a president, a banker, or a father.
Regarding character, including core principles and accomplishments, I compare Trump and Harris.
Clearly one has the character and core principles for a person entrusted with the presidency. Trump clearly does not.
Why does this not appear obvious in daily news reporting (as distinct from editorials)? Catchy headlines and story placement are distracting and, in some instances, deliberate obfuscation of important news.
As a professor, I swiftly was able to identify those students who had the character and the sticktoitness to excel and those who were skimming and lacked core principles, including as it related to plagiarism.
The same character yardstick should be applied to vice presidential candidates. That Vance was a slicker Yale Law School debater than Governor Walz was in many headlines. It took some digging to discover that Governor Walz dealt principally with substance as it related to programs of Harris (Biden) and what he is accomplishing in Minnesota.
By contrast, chameleon Vance was seeking to ‘soften’ the harshness of Trump’s pronounced policies and smilingly often responded with lies and bizarre misstatements.
Jim, you are far more knowledgeable than us about the inner intrigues of the media business. How can the American public AT A GLANCE appreciate the core character differences in this 2024 presidential race?