As a Matter of Fact

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 11:18 AM

The anchor was giving the McCain spokesman a hard time.

"Has your candidate gone too far? Has he stretched the truth with the voters?" spokesman Tucker Bounds was asked. In reply, Bounds repeated McCain's claim that Barack Obama would raise taxes.

The anchor fired back: "But you guys have suggested that he'll raise taxes on the middle class, and virtually every independent analyst who took a look at that claim says that's not true. . . . And if that's false, why would John McCain do that?"

Some hopelessly biased agent of the liberal media? No, it was Megyn Kelly of Fox News.

As the media increasingly push back against falsehoods in McCain's statements and advertising -- yes, there have been some Obama falsehoods as well, but of lesser frequency and magnitude -- the Arizonan's campaign and its allies are trying to discredit such criticism. Never mind that Karl Rove says McCain's ads have gone too far. Journalists must have a partisan agenda!

The Weekly Standard, in the person of Bill Kristol, cited my blog in its lead editorial about the press vs. McCain.

I wrote last week: "The media are getting mad. News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it's the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes 'age-appropriate' programs) or Palin's repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark)." The maddest of all, I wrote, were liberal columnists, such as Joe Klein, who once admired John McCain and are now infuriated by his tactics.

Kristol, lumping together the mainstream press and the liberal pundits, writes: "Of course, politicians are always trying to manipulate the media. And the liberal media are always allowing themselves to be manipulated by liberal politicians. So why the foot-stamping snit by liberal journalists? Not because 'the press is being manipulated.' Rather, because the American people are resisting manipulation by the media."

When I say the media are going after false or questionable claims by the McCain camp, Kristol retorts: "In other words, the media are going after McCain. . . .'Why? Because McCain is doing well. And because Sarah Palin is surviving -- even flourishing -- in the midst of the liberal media onslaught. When the media get mad, they don't just pout. They pounce."

Kristol takes issue with some of my examples, which is fine, and then says Obama also distorts, noting his accusation that McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq. But here's the difference: When the press called him on that, Obama stopped saying it. Sarah Palin said again yesterday that she'd said thanks but no thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere -- after every major news organization showed that she originally supported the project. (It's even on videotape.) You'd think she would at least modify her language. But no.

And again yesterday Palin said flatly that Obama wants to raise taxes, prompting a clarification from a CNN correspondent.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told Politico: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." That's their privilege. But it doesn't mean that journalists shouldn't do their jobs.

The Obama campaign is trying to milk the media criticism in a commercial ( ad watch here), and by sending around excerpts of various editorials and columns.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "The volume and audacity of lies pouring from the McCain campaign is startling and even historic."

St. Petersburg Times: "McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Is it worth winning an election if it means forfeiting your soul on the altar of political expediency?"

But does any of this matter? As I say in the ad watch, voters are accustomed to seeing politicians accuse each other of lying in their advertising.

Marc Ambinder examines the question:

"Some former administration officials will admit that one of the biggest conceptual flaws of the Bush administration was to treat the truth as a fudgable convenience; confidence isolated decision-makers; when real things happened -- Katrina, say -- rhetoric didn't exactly do the job. The Obama campaign remains convinced that McCain isn't paying a penalty for deliberately, knowingly and willfully misleading people.

" The Press Has Turned-- The press has decided that McCain's distortions are more consequential than Obama's distortions, and they are calling McCain out for them. A 'narrative' has been created. This turn has been accompanied by cheers from the pundit class that Obama has gotten meaner. Conservative activists may retrench."

HuffPost's Tom Edsall says it's McCain who is pushing the envelope:

"The McCain campaign, in running TV ads which defy prior political standards, is gambling that the traditional rules governing what is permissible in presidential contests -- as defined by the mainstream media -- can safely be discarded this year.

"The normally cautious and even-handed Associated Press on Thursday declared, 'Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's skirting of facts has stood out this week.' . . .

"So far, based on polling over the past two weeks, McCain's roll of the dice has paid off. Not only has McCain made substantial gains, pulling modestly ahead in most national polls, but his assaults on Obama appear to have damaged the Democratic Party as well, raising Republican hopes of minimizing House and Senate losses."

Salon's Farhad Manjoo does the math:

"Since July, John McCain and his campaign have made 11 political claims that are barely true, eight that are categorically false, and three that you'd have to call pants-on-fire lies -- a total of 22 clearly deceptive statements (many of them made repeatedly in ads and stump speeches). Barack Obama and Joe Biden, meanwhile, have put out eight bare truths, four untruths, and zero pants-on-fire lies -- 12 false claims. These stats and categories come from PolitiFact, but the story looks pretty much the same if you count up fabrications documented by FactCheck.org or the Washington Post's Fact Checker, the other truth-squad operations working the race: During the past two and a half months, McCain has lied more often and more outrageously than Obama."

Andrew Sullivan also piles on:

"Another absurd ad repeating the absolute lie that Sarah Palin stopped the 'Bridge To Nowhere.' As everyone knows by now, she lobbied for the bridge to nowhere, and the federal Congress killed it, and then she kept the money for other projects anyway. But McCain is still airing ads telling the same lie.

"He has also still not retracted his lie on The View when he point blank said that Palin has refused all earmarks as governor. I cannot remember a candidate for president telling such a bald-faced lie on national television and not retracting. And I cannot remember a press corps so pathetic they cannot badger his campaign for a retraction after two days."

But is it a sign of the media's weakness that McCain-Palin haven't adjusted claims that are reported to be exaggerated or false? Or a sign of the campaign's determination to ignore what it would call the elite media?

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin has a very different take on the media's factual accusations against McCain:

"They are preparing their excuses for defeat. No matter how foolhardy the Democratic primary voters in selecting a high risk candidate, no matter how bizarre the policy choices of that candidate, no matter how outlandishly wrong the conventional press wisdom and no matter how inept the campaign operation there is a cure-all excuse: McCain lied, our hopes died.

"I am not saying Barack Obama is going to lose; I am saying the Obama Gang of Three (i.e. the mind-melded bloggers/MSM/campaign operation) now thinks that is a distinct possibility. So how to explain how they all messed up? When in doubt, revive the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove/Gore v. Bush/Swiftboat rationale which is 'It is never our fault.' "

Could the Palin saga, now 2 1/2 weeks and going strong, peter out soon? Marketwatch's Jon Friedman says it's a matter of time:

"The primary reason why the Palin bubble will burst is that the media will decide that they are bored with her. They'll need to move to shine a light on a fresh issue or individual.

"This is how the world works in the age of 24/7 news cycles. Whether the subject is Britney Spears, Michael Jordan or Sarah Palin, we inevitably raise stars to mythic levels, out of all reasonable proportions. Then we knock them down. (Look out, Michael Phelps. Your time is coming, too.)

"It isn't a case of quixotic behavior by reporters and editors. Internet sites, blogs and cable news operations all thrive on presenting fresh headlines and updated story angles as often as possible so readers think we're on top of things. The news world moves at warp speed."

All true. But Palin has touched so many cultural chords -- about women, power, motherhood, abortion, religion and on and on -- that I think this thing still has a way to go.

What about that other running-mate person? National Review's Jonah Goldberg says Biden is getting a total pass:

"I really wish the press held Obama just a bit more accountable for this 'governing pick' thing like, say, 1/100th as much as they've been grilling McCain about his pick. Just a few facts:

"· Obama justified his entire bid against Hillary Clinton on the grounds that he had shown superior judgment by opposing the Iraq war.

"· Obama said over and over that we can't have the same people in different chairs if we want real reform.

"· His ad mocking McCain makes much hay of the fact that McCain came to Washington in 1982.

"Well: Biden supported the Iraq war, he's even more of Washington insider than McCain (his heroic Amtrak commute notwithstanding) and he was well into his second six year term in the Senate when McCain was first elected to the House in 1982. Now either Obama's campaign rhetoric is a lie, or Biden isn't a good governing pick by Obama's own standards."

A small but hardy band of conservatives isn't defending Palin's experience. Here's Atlantic's Ross Douthat on the Gibson interviews:

"The most that can be said in her defense is that she kept her cool and avoided any brutal gaffes; other than that, she seemed about an inch deep on every issue outside her comfort zone. Yes, the questions were tougher than the ones that a Tim Kaine or Tim Pawlenty probably would have been handed, but they were all questions that a vice-presidential nominee needs to be able to answer. And there's no way to look at her performance as anything save supporting evidence for the non-hysterical critique of her candidacy -- that it's just too much, too soon -- and a splash of cold water for those of us with high hopes for her future on the national stage."

Speaking of Gibson and Palin, I have the greatest regard for my former colleague Steve Coll, but his New Yorker piece on the subject really missed the mark. Coll rips ABC News President David Westin and his team for an "odor of compromise" in the way the interviews were rolled out:

"The occasion of the Alaska governor's début before the national media called for a lightly edited, extended one-on-one, aired on a single night, so that American voters might assess the candidate's answers and demeanor in full. Instead, apparently to maximize ratings and branding opportunities, ABC doled out Palin sound bites on six network broadcasts over two days, as well as in supplemental ABC Radio and Web releases.

"In the end, Westin exploited the governor's moose-hunting, baby-juggling appeal as if she were a magnetic contestant on one of the network's prime-time reality shows--'Extreme Makeover: White House Edition.' "

First, Palin basically dictated the schedule and the locale (Alaska); ABC wanted to do it as soon as possible. Second, by doing three sessions, Gibson got more time for more questions than he would have in the traditional 30-minute sit-down. Third, there's only so much of an interview you can cram into the 19 or so minutes of "World News," and ABC did devote about half the broadcast to Palin last Thursday. Finally, ABC made the interviews (and transcripts, and some clips) available as soon as they were done, rather than waiting 48 hours to tie them into one pretty package.

Did ABC milk its exclusive a bit, including on a prime-time "20/20"? Sure. But I think the record shows the network treated the event as news, not entertainment. And not one question about Bristol's pregnancy!