The Media’s False Portrayal of the Clintons at the Democratic Convention

If you care at all about the state of journalism in our nation, Eric Boehlert’s piece over at MediaMatters.Org titled The Denver Media Migraine is a must-read for you. Specifically, Boehlert is critiquing the coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, focusing on the portrayal of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Here’s a sample:

‘“How 15,000 credentialed journalists could descend on Denver and produce such unvaryingly weak and shoddy coverage of a staged news event -- and do it with coverage that celebrated sameness and shallowness -- was a sad spectacle that newsrooms nationwide ought to ponder.’”

Boehlert zeroes in on the media’s concerted efforts to create a fictitious storyline to demonize Bill and Hillary Clinton up to the very last moment prior to each of their appearances at which the former president and first lady were both well received by the delegates.”

Boeherlet asks:

‘“And what about Patrick Healy's August 28, page one article about Hillary's address to the convention where Healy reported, in the second paragraph, that she "took steps on Tuesday -- deliberate steps, aides said -- to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency.; As the Daily Howler noted, there wasn't a single fact or quote in the entire article to back up Healy's fictitious claim that bolstered the ‘ill will’ theme of the article's opening. Was that the kind of Denver gold Keller was hoping for?

“Imagine if a Times reporter filed a front-page story from Beijing about Michael Phelps and inserted a completely unsupported claim up high in the article that made Phelps look petty and selfish. Think Times editors would have printed it?

And what about Times heavy hitter Jill Abramson, who wrote matter-of-factly on Friday that the Monday-through-Wednesday portion of the convention had a theme, and ‘its narrative was [the Clinton] soap opera.’ And specifically, the ‘narrative’ was whether Bill and Hillary would ‘behave themselves’ and ‘embrace Barack Obama.’

“She wrote that after the convention had concluded, after Bill and Hillary Clinton had enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama and after Democrats ended the convention on an historic and united front. Even then, the Times was still pushing the media's beloved narrative of a Clinton ‘soap opera’ and how the two nearly ripped the party in two inside the Pepsi Center.

‘“Question for Abramson: Who pre-selected that ‘soap opera’ narrative? Answer: The press. What actual proof did the press have to support it? Almost none. (Hillary Clinton had already publicly, and formally, endorsed Obama months prior to the convention.) I suspect if a truth serum poll could have been conducted in Denver to find out how many professional poll watchers within the press corps actually thought that Bill or Hillary Clinton would refuse to ‘embrace’ Obama at the convention, the answer would have been zero. But how many within the press pretended for days that that was a possibility? Almost all of them.

“Indeed, there was lots of pretending going on in Denver, like when Politico suggested Hillary Clinton might be booed by Obama delegates during her address. And when, prior to Bill Clinton's taking the Denver stage, MSNBC's Chris Matthews raised the possibility that he might get a Bronx cheer. (Apparently because they're such divisive figures within the Democratic Party.) Viewers who saw the rapturous welcome both Clinton's received will recall that those predictions were inaccurate.

Boehlert concludes:

“What was behind that type of half-baked Times/Politico/Matthews convention analysis? The answer is that it was based on nothing. The concocted Clinton storylines simply reflected what some journalists wanted to see happen, which then made it slightly plausible, and therefore news. (Speculating now trumps reporting.) To suggest that approach demolishes decades' worth of American journalism standards would be an understatement.

“It's impossible to escape the conclusion that journalists for much of the week in Denver weren't informing news consumers about the unfolding event, they were purposefully misinforming people. (Bill and Hill might snub Obama!) Think about where journalism is heading when an entire industry knowingly adopts a false narrative and pushes it for days simply because it likes it; because it gives journalists a good storyline.”

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