February 9, 2007 -- 9:44 AM EST // //
WHY WON'T MEDIA JUST SAY THAT PELOSI PLANE STORY IS FALSE?
Why is the media so reluctant to use the "F" word -- that is, the word "false"? The Pelosi plane story is false. Why won't the media just say so? "False." It's not a hard word to write or say.
One of things that's seriously puzzling about the big news orgs, and the political media in particular, is that it's crowded with self-regarding professionals who presumably went into this racket because they had some sort of sense of themselves as wanting to become truth-seekers. Yet here they are in the grip of self-imposed conventions which dictate that you should be reluctant to say flat out that a story's false when it is in fact just that.
Case in point: Today's dismal coverage of the bogus Nancy Pelosi plane story. This tall tale holds that Pelosi "requested" a larger and more luxurious plane than her predecessor, something which allegedly shows that Pelosi's a luxury-loving San Francisco liberal. The wingnut media and GOP members of Congress alike have been pushing the story for days. But the story's false: Yesterday the House sergeant-at-arms released a statement saying that he had for security reasons requested a plane that could fly nonstop to her California district. He made the request. She didn't. Story false.
So let's check out today's coverage. Here's today's Associated Press headline:
This headline is entirely inaccurate. It says straightforwardly that the GOP is hitting Pelosi for something she did do -- request the plane -- when she in fact didn't do this. What's more, the AP piece says that "reports swirled" yesterday that she'd requested the bigger plane, without stating explicitly where these "reports" were coming from -- that is, the wingnut media and her GOP rivals. Finally, the revelation that proves the story bogus -- the fact that the House sergeant-at-arms made the request -- doesn't come until the twelfth paragraph, long after quotes from not one but two GOP "critics." This is just dismal.
The other coverage? The Times's piece today doesn't get around to sharing this critical info until the twelfth paragraph. The L.A. Times piece today was even worse; incredibly, the paper's "news coverage" of the flap said she "sniped" at her "critics," and didn't include the vital info until the last two grafs. Needless to say, none of this coverage said outright, or even indirectly, that the story was false; none of it even explained explicitly that the sergeant-at-arms' statment appeared to contradict and discredit the criticism.
Why not? Do unspoken conventions dictate that doing this is a no-no? Not necessarily. The Times, for instance, recently allowed itself to do this, putting the following headline on the false story about Barack Obama allegedly attending a Muslim school as a child:
Feeding Frenzy For a Big Story, Even if It's False
See? The big news orgs can do this. What's bizarre, as today's awful coverage of the Pelosi story shows, is the reluctance to do it, the reluctance to even do it with a euphemism like "discredited" or "inaccurate." It's even more bizarre when you consider the reason many journalists are supposed to have gone into this biz in the first place.
Update: Here's another bad one, from Howard Kurtz.
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