IS THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL BIASED? Or: how do you fairly and objectively describe a Bush campaign fundraiser? In a June 24th New York Times, we read the following paragraph: “Despite the fund-raiser’s high admission price, it was not an elegant event. Large crowds surged around the buffet tables … which held tepid mini quiches, while larger crowds pressed toward the front of the room under bright white lights … former Representative Rick Lazio of Long Island, the Republican who lost to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2000 Senate race, was near the door.”

There’s a snarky tone to all this. The huffing over the quiche, which is not only “mini,” bad enough at $2000 a pop but also (horrors!) “tepid.” And then there are the glaring lights, which hardly befit an event with an “high admission price.” Perhaps the biggest loser in this paragraph is poor Richard Lazio, who, his career over, lingers Ancient Mariner like by the door of the great event, petitioning passers-by to listen to the story of his Fall to Hillary. (I don’t know, there’s just something poignant about adding that Lazio was “near the door” – as opposed to, say, “seated at the dais.”)

But the point is that no one goes to a campaign fund-raiser for the quiche or the lighting. They’ve paid the high admission price because, apart from the fact that they get to see Bush speak, they want to see their candidate win (benign interpretation) or they want to buy access (sinister but probably true interpretation). The tone of the paragraph I’ve quoted gives sort of a wink and a nod, as if to say, we all know what this is about – it’s about just raking in the money. I mean, did we really need to know that the quiche wasn’t quite warm enough? Describing the bad food and the bad lights like this seems more like getting some jabs in than reporting newsworthy facts.

It gets worse when the two writers go on to discuss Dick Cheney’s performance at his own fundraising event across town. We learn that “Cheney’s famously uninflected speaking style failed to rouse his audience” and that “seven or eight obvious applause lines … flew right by the crowd with no reaction.” And we’re told that, “finally,” some of Cheney’s men started “leading the applause” in order, obviously, to cue the rest of the audience that (hello!) they should start applauding.

Again, what passes here for description read an awful lot like digs against the vice president. It’s one thing to describe the audience’s reaction as “muted” (or even “tepid”) but it’s another thing to go and on like this for two paragraphs, painting the picture of an increasingly desperate Cheney flailing a the speaker’s podium, searching for a response, or even a pulse, from the people assembled to hear him (is this mike on?).

But is all of this bias, and is it even objectionable? There’s no obvious political or ideological bias involved – there’s no critique of anything substantive that the president or vice-president has proposed, and the article is even generous in quoting praise of Bush’s performance in the “war on terrorism.” So the bias here certainly isn’t overt, and it isn’t in any obvious way “liberal” as opposed to “conservative” or “democratic” as opposed to “republican.” Nor is it necessarily picking on the two personalities, although the statements about Cheney come pretty close.

What comes across however, is a tone, even an orientation, that colors the piece, and especially the paragraphs I’ve quoted. It’s a certain knowingness, that these events are all set-ups, that the quiche and the lights are just cheap props, and what matters is not genuine applause but any applause, even handler-induced applause (“Mr. Cheney’s handlers began leading the applause”). The sense is that, to these reporters, it’s all a big show, and they know better, and are knowingly cynical about the whole thing. In a lot of ways, this bias is more corrosive than overt, political bias. That at least you can detect most of the time (as with Fox News: “We Decide, You Shut Up.”)

The thing is, I agree with what story implies. But I’d rather read a straight out, straightforward critique of the way the American political process works (or doesn’t work) in the editorial section, then have it sneaked to me between the lines of a news story.

- posted by Chad @ Sunday, July 06, 2003