Special Report:
WashPo and Time Help ABC Bury Treatment of Kucinich
Following last Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC News’ This Week
with George Stephanopoulos, Dennis Kucinich’s campaign asked ABC News
to address issues it had with treatment Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) received
both
during the debate and afterward in ABC’s online coverage. In an email
sent out
to supporters on Wednesday, the campaign said it “submitted objections
and
inquiries to ABC News representatives on
Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond –
or even acknowledge – those objections and inquiries.” I confirmed with
the Kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded
the same response ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones sent to The
Washington Post and Time magazine.
ABC News representatives felt it necessary to answer the Kucinich campaign’s objections when Time magazine’s National Political Correspondent Karen Tumulty queried them. Writing on the Time
blog Swampland, Tumulty initially says of the Kucinich team’s issues
with ABC’s treatment (which included Kucinich not having a chance to
speak until 28 minutes into the debate), “These all seemed like fair
complaints to me, so I asked ABC News to respond.” Then Tumulty says,
“In an e-mail, Executive Director Andrea Jones answered him [Kucinich]
point by point.”
While I give Tumulty credit for contacting ABC News, her investigative journalism unfortunately ends there. Once
she receives the email from Jones, Tumulty slips into stenography
mode. Jones’ “point by point” response to the Kucinich campaign’s complaints does not in itself
exculpate or dispel any of ABC’s wrongdoing. Tumulty fails to assess the
accuracy and logic of Jones’ answers.
First, just so we’re all up to speed, here are the issues (an
aggregate of the thousands of complaints received during and after
ABC’s debate coverage) that the Kucinich campaign asked ABC News to
address:
* Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a “Politics Page” photo of the candidates.
* Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a
commanding lead in ABC’s own on-line “Who won the Democratic debate”
survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.* ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.
* After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich
winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the
original survey with a second survey asking “Who is winning the
Democratic debate?”* During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator
Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday
morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in
this second survey.* Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.
* AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday
Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an
opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos
until 28 minutes into the program.
Now back to Tumulty commenting on Jones’ response [emphasis below is mine]:
This gist of her answer is this: She denies that Kucinich was cropped
out of any photo, noting that “there are 20 photos live on the ABC News
website, Mr. Kucinich is in a number of them and there is even one of
him and his wife. He is one of 6 candidates who got his own photo in
the slide show. As for the images, clearly nothing was cropped, the
image in question was shot by Charlie Neibergall of the AP not ABC.“
FALSE. Had Tumulty – Time
magazine’s National Political Correspondent and former member of the White House
press corps – simply located the original AP photo
(which, at most, should’ve taken a few minutes online), she would’ve
found Kucinich in it and realized the following version ABC News
prominently displayed online after the debate had, indeed, been cropped:
So Jones
either lied when she said “clearly nothing was cropped” or was
misinformed by someone on her staff. Since Tumulty seems to think her
job ends with receiving answers from an ABC News spokesperson, she
doesn’t question the veracity of Jones’ assertion, which is clearly false.
Adding to its duplicity, ABC News has now completely replaced the original
photograph in question. If you click on the link in Tumulty’s post
(which is supposed to bring you to that photo), you are now taken to a wholly different shot that includes Dennis Kucinich and is currently the default debate photo sitting on the ABC News website.
So, in case your keeping score, first ABC
disappears Kucinich from a photo by cropping him out, then denies it,
then later disappears the original cropped photo, replacing it with a
separate photo that includes Kucinich, making it appear as if nothing improper ever occurred.
Eat your heart out Fox News.
Tumulty does later post an update after she manages (she doesn’t say
how) to find her way to a page on the site Pinkraygun that shows the
original AP photo and the doctored ABC
photo side-by-side. This compels Tumulty to gingerly concede “there
does in
fact appear to have been some cropping.” First, it was either cropped
or it wasn’t. “Some cropping” gives the impression a whole
cropping didn’t occur, which it did. Second, if there was “some
cropping,” then logic follows that Jones either did some lying or some misinforming. That, in turn, means Tumulty should be doing some follow up with Jones. She does not. Third, a question for Tumulty and her editors over at Time: How
did you fail to bring this simple fact to light yourselves? You had
three main points to investigate – whether a photo was cropped, whether
a poll was manipulated and whether Kucinich was allotted a fair amount
of time. Arguably, the cropped photo was the most simple and quick of the three to
verify. Did you attempt to find this on your own? If so, what’s your
excuse for initially failing to obtain such readily available evidence? If not,
what’s your excuse for failing to pursue this evidence in the first place?
On to the poll(s):
She notes that the poll was and is live on ABC’s website. (When I checked it, Kucinich was
still winning, with Barack Obama a distant second.) She also notes the
poll’s disclaimer that it is “not a scientific survey,” which seems
like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story.
MISLEADING.
Jones’ statement circumvents the facts and the original thrust of the
Kucinich campaign’s complaint about the poll. Tumulty’s unobtrusive
reporting gives the impression the poll has always been up on ABC’s
site in clear view and at no time were changes made to it.
FACT: The original poll, prominently displayed, asked, “Who won the
Democratic debate?” Once Kucinich jumped ahead, this poll was scuttled
from its prominence on the site. As it became clear Kucinich was
trouncing his competition, ABC just happened to decide to post a new
poll asking, “Who is winning the
Democratic debate?” As the Kucinich campaign (and Tumulty) correctly cited, Barack
Obama had an early lead in this second poll; but when Kucinich pulled
ahead by a wide margin, ABC then dropped this poll from prominence,
too. (Because the Kucinich camp had difficulty finding the poll after
ABC moved it, they questioned whether ABC may have buried the poll “or
killed it entirely.” It appears ABC didn’t kill it entirely; they just
made it difficult for users work to find – which, as anyone who
knows anything about online usability, is nearly tantamount to killing
it).
Though of lesser importantance (due to the current unverifiable
nature of online polls), Tumulty still manages to mishandle Jones’
explanation of why ABC News didn’t report the poll results. This issue
is about nuance and context. Not exactly Tumulty’s and the
mainstream media’s forte.
Yes, the online poll is “not a scientific
survey”* (incidentally, it’s verboten to mention in the mainstream media that
phone surveys, many of which include leading and misleading questions,
are often far from scientific accountings as well). But since news outlets
(possibly ABC among them) have certainly noted some online polls in the
past but in context of their scientific shortcomings, and considering
ABC’s shenanigans concerning Kucinich, it seems either intellectually
dishonest or misinformed for Tumulty to give Jones the free pass “which
seems
like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story.”
Does Tumulty honestly believe it’s “a decent reason”? Or does she merely believe it’s decent enough because
the target of the question is ABC News and the questioner is the
not-so-“viable” candidate Kucinich?
I should note here that
Tumulty frames her post with the opening line: “Should the networks and
interest groups that have been sponsoring the
seemingly endless series of debates and candidate forums start limiting
their invitations to those contenders who seem, by whatever definition,
‘viable’?” She then claims to like “the idea of including candidates
from the second tier–and beyond–in these settings,” saying, “You
never know when lightning may strike, and how is an underfinanced
long-shot going to get a breakout moment otherwise?” and that
“candidates such as Dennis Kucinich often are the only ones giving
voice
to ideas–like single-payer health care and a quick withdrawal from
Iraq–that have not been embraced by the leading candidates, despite
having significant support among the party rank and file.” Yet Tumulty
seems incapable of embracing such basic tenets of a democratic
political process; instead, she reverts to entrenched media establishment dogma
to round out her post’s frame: “Still, having decided to include them, should
they be given the same amount of time and attention as the leaders in
the race?”
This is the journalist we’re going to trust to get to the bottom of
whether ABC News treated Dennis Kucinich fairly?
Finally, there’s ABC’s defense of Kucinich
receiving so little airtime during the debate
and, once again, Tumulty’s stenographic framing and conclusions [emphasis below is mine]:
As for Kucinich’s complaint that he was not given a question in the
first 28 minutes of the debate, Jones notes: “He may not have been
addressed in the first 28 minutes, but he was the only candidate
questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos,
two weeks in a row, that appearance is posted online
as well. Also. Mr. Kucinich was the only candidate to address
healthcare in Sunday’s debate, and that response was immediately
clipped and posted on the ABC News website.” Her bottom line: “After
back to back appearances on ABC News’ This Week with George
Stephanopoulos, clearly their claim is not substantiated by the facts
nor by the extensive coverage of his candidacy on the ABCNews.com
website.”
First,
Jones’ “bottom line” skirts the issue at hand: she concedes ABC’s
debate moderators failed to address Kucinich in the first 28 minutes
of the forum (though she frames her concession with the words “he may
not have been addressed” rather than “he wasn’t addressed,”
incorporating shades of doubt, as if this were somehow open to
interpretation), but claims that ABC News has provided Kucinich much
airtime overall.
Yet here’s the real bottom line: In any equitable debate, no
candidate should have to remain
silent for the first 28 minutes. Period. This is not only unfair to
Congressman Kucinich, but to all American citizens
for whom news outlets such as ABC are supposed to be informing their
decision-making process instead of acting to unduly manipulate
it.
What’s more, Jones’ claim that Kucinich “was the only candidate
questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos,
two weeks in a row” and that he had “back to back appearances” on this
program is blatantly misleading. (I must admit this one initially
slipped by me until, while fact-checking another element of this story,
I stumbled across the truth in a conversation I had yesterday with
Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz. More on that below).
FACT: Kucinich has made one appearance on This Week with
George Stephanopoulos. Jones has the audacity to count Kucinich’s
appearance at this ABC debate as his second appearance on the show in
which – breathing even new life into the word “truthiness” – he’s
received “his own segment.” Can Jones explain how a candidate receives
his own segment during a debate? What in the world is she talking
about?
Moreover, in a statistical analysis
of the debate performed by USA
Election Polls, Kucinich was given less time to speak than any
candidate with the
exception of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. Yet it gets worse: in
the critical first half of the debate (the time when viewers tend to be
most engaged), Kucinich received just 3.4% of airtime, the least of all
the candidates. To put
that in context, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama
combined to chew up 60.4% of airtime during the first half of the
debate.
USA Election Polls also points out:
In fact, even Chris Dodd got more air time than Kucinich which is
ridiculous because Kucinich is beating Dodd in the majority of state
polls. So if the emphasis was on giving the most time to the leaders in
the polls, then what was Dodd doing speaking more than Kucinich?
Nevertheless, Tumulty and Time
magazine show no interest in such further incontrovertible proof of the
unfair treatment to which ABC News subjected Congressman Kucinich.
Instead, Tumulty
follows up Jones’ “bottom line” by closing her post with these thoughts:
I honestly don’t know what the right balance is here when you are
dealing with such a large field of candidates, most of whom don’t have
a prayer of winning. What do you think? Was Kucinich treated unfairly?
Or should he be included at all?*
*Not a scientific survey.
Cute. But parting shot at the Kucinich campaign aside, shouldn’t Tumulty and Time
magazine provide the facts in a piece titled “Dennis Kucinich vs. ABC
News”? Instead, we’re presented with a slanted, inaccurate, misleading and
ill-researched breakdown of events that ends with Tumulty floating the question of
whether Kucinich should be allowed to attend these debates in the first
place.
And sadly, thanks to The Washington Post, that wasn’t the worst coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident by a major news outlet.
In a post titled “Kucinich Mad at
ABC” over at The Washington Post blog
The Sleuth (oh the irony), journalist Mary Ann Akers (a former reporter for The Washington Times as well as NPR)
doesn’t try to hide her contempt for Kucinich while barreling ahead
without concern for facts or fact-checking.
She opens her post:
Don’t expect to see too many more appearances by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on ABC News.
An apparently irate Kucinich sent out a letter to supporters
Wednesday accusing the network of ignoring him in the Democratic
presidential debate on Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
So
since Kucinich – along with, and spurred on by, thousands of other
American citizens – objected to ABC’s handling of the debate, should
we expect, and accept, that ABC has a right to actively work to further
marginalize him?
If
that’s Akers’ frame, you can guess where this is going.
Also, because she
fails to cite any source, we must assume her characterization of
Kucinich as “apparently irate” hinges not on fact but projection. And as it turns out, that is exactly the case.
Yesterday, when I contacted Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz, he addressed Akers unfounded assertion:
“Congressman Kucinich was not irate. Nothing in the email
communication expressed anger,” said the soft-spoken Juniewicz. “It was
just a delineation of what we were
hearing from thousands of people who contacted us, many of whom weren’t
even Kucinich supporters. We asked ABC to respond to the questions they
raised.” When I asked if Akers or someone else at The Washington Post
had spoken with anyone in his campaign about this purported
demonstration of anger, Mr. Juniewicz said, “No. No one.”
Note to Akers and The Washington Post: Before the Internets, there
was the telephone. Some news outlets, though fewer and fewer these
days, still find it handy for checking facts.
Moving right along, Akers then runs through roughly the same terrain on which Tumulty
trodded, but her condescension and bias is profligate and shameless.
Among Kucinich’s charges: he was “deliberately cropped out” of photos;
after he took a “commanding lead” in ABC’s online survey, the survey
was mysteriously “dropped from prominence on the web site”; and “as
every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday presidential forum is
aware” Kucinich was not asked a question until 28 minutes into the
program. (Everyone clocked that at 28 minutes, right?)
“Among
Kucinich’s charges” blunts the fact they’ve all been proven to be true
(something Akers apparently has no interest in uncovering or
presenting). Use of the word “mysteriously” not only mocks the
assertion that the poll was buried but conjures the mainstream media’s
favorite attack on uncomfortable truths: it must be the work of those
crazy conspiracy theorists (Akers also disregards the full story –
previously addressed above in this post – behind ABC’s bizarre and
devious manipulation of the debate’s polls). “Everyone
clocked that at 28
minutes, right?” is not only disparaging but gives the ludicrous
impression the Kucinich campaign
is contending everyone noticed the precise number of minutes
Kucinich had been shut out of the debate; rather, the campaign was
noting a simple fact: everyone watching certainly saw that Kucinich
didn’t get a chance to speak for an usually long duration of time.
We deserve more than such absurd manufactured nitpicking from
Akers and The Washington Post. Rather than chasing their tail to
portray Kucinich in a poor light, think of how much easier it would’ve
been to just present the facts. And to search them out.
But hey, according to Akers, “ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones
addressed every charge Kucinich made.” Incredibly, Akers not only
embraces Jones’ answers without question, but also unwittingly contradicts
Jones’ claim that the photo in question was never cropped by providing
the ABC debate photo below her post. In other words, the AP photo that
ABC undeniably cropped is sitting below Akers’ post in which she
contends no cropping occurred. Again, all one needs to do is locate the original AP photo. And presto! Cropping mystery solved.
Again, too, Jones is either lying or misinformed, and Akers and The
Washington Post (along with Tumulty and Time magazine) are complicit in perpetuating this falsehood.
Escaping Akers’ notice or range of journalistic concern as well is
ABC’s wholesale swapping out of its cropped photo with an altogether
new one in which Kucinich appears alongside the rest of the Democratic
candidates. ABC News, in effect, has worked diligently to cover up this
despicable act, one worthy of Fox News and Orwell’s vision
of totalitarian media manipulation.
In their coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident, Time
magazine’s Tumulty and The Washington Post’s Akers wind up
crystallizing the extent to which big media rigs the game against a
candidate like Congressman Kucinich. In defense of sound and equitable
journalism, it is incumbent upon both Time
magazine and The Washington Post to correct the record on ABC’s
actions, and the rest of the news media to hold ABC News accountable
for this disgraceful performance.
No news organization – especially one charged with facilitating part
of our electoral process – should be able to so grossly transgress such
basic journalistic standards and not be held to account. This isn’t a
partisan issue. Congressman Kucinich’s chances of capturing the
Democratic nomination are irrelevant to this matter.
This speaks to the viability of our national press.
At a time when the mainstream media is struggling to retain and
rebuild both its credibility and coveted market share among Americans,
it ignores ABC’s actions at its own peril.
UPDATE: I’ll be away until after Labor Day weekend
(wedding – not mine), but I first wanted to say thanks for your
additional insights, passionate (yet substantive) comments and very
kind words. To first-time readers, welcome! To everyone, by all means,
keep the conversation going while I’m away. And if you want to do something else to keep (or turn up) the heat on ABC, request that this story does not stop here. Don’t
just contact ABC or other mainstream news outlets – contact Raw Story,
Salon, Think Progress, Media Matters, FAIR.org and Truthout, and
respectfully request they cover this story. Along with Crooks and
Liars, these major alternative news outlets get the mainstream’s
attention and greatly increase the chances of forcing the mainstream’s
hand. More than anything, ABC wants this story to drop right down the
memory hole: it’s up to you to make sure that doesn’t happen.
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