NEWS ANALYSIS : ‘Talking Heads’ and ‘Nutty’ Polls Give Bush Much-Needed Boost : Campaign: The media turn into the President’s sudden ally in accenting his new ‘buoyancy’ and ‘fire.’ But they take a harsher look at Perot.
WASHINGTON — In the final crucial days of the race for the White House, those television “talking heads†and media manipulators that President Bush has said he “can’t stand,†emerged as his sudden ally in his bid to save his job.
Throughout much of the week, the media made much of the President’s new “buoyancy†and “fire†in their morning and evening newscasts. Having steered clear to an unprecedented degree of daily stump coverage during the last few months, the major networks returned to it just as Bush was hitting stride on the trail.
He also owed a special debt to the way several media outlets treated what he last week termed those “nutty†polls. In perhaps the key boost for Bush’s hopes of upsetting Democrat Bill Clinton, the press seized upon a public opinion survey that even some White House officials thought exaggerated how tight the race had become.
“Clinton is trying to hold a shrinking lead,†warned Andrea Mitchell of NBC on Wednesday. “Republicans are coming home to Bush.â€
The week ended roughly for Bush, however, as all three evening news shows led with disclosure of a 1986 memo from then-Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger that raised new questions about whether Bush has been truthful in discussing the extent of his knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal. The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather called the memo “a bombshell.â€
As the race counted down, the media also took a harsh new look at independent Ross Perot in the wake of his allegations that one of his daughters was the target of Republican “dirty tricks.†One report on NBC came close to rendering a judgment--unusual for the American press--that the Texas businessman was unfit to be President.
Clinton, meanwhile, frequently was the least visible of the candidates on the airwaves, as has often been the case. When he did show up, it was typically in a defensive posture as he was cast as a one-time prohibitive front-runner whose lead was suddenly endangered.
Bush’s “surge†began in earnest on Tuesday, when all three networks led with the news that the gross domestic product index of economic growth had risen by a higher-than-expected annual rate of 2.7% in the third quarter.
Bush spent the next three days flogging the figure as proof of the economy’s vigor, as well as the media’s bias toward his Administration. If the press were more objective, he argued, Americans would have had a more positive attitude about the economy, and thus would have bought more goods, which would have sparked even more growth and resulted in more support for his reelection.
The economic news was “casting fear into those talking heads on TV,†Bush railed from the stump on Wednesday. Vice President Dan Quayle appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live†and ABC’s “Nightline†armed with charts depicting an improving economy. And both Republicans complained that the third quarter growth figure was receiving short shrift in news reports.
Actually, some of the accounts--such as the one on NBC--treated the new number as plainly positive. But others were more skeptical.
“There is a divergence between this report and economic reality,†Merrill Lynch economist Bruce Steinberg said on ABC’s “World News.†Economist Allen Sinai added: “We are a good way from being where we’re back in business.â€
For all his gripes, Bush’s biggest bounce came from numbers generated not by his Commerce Department, but the media itself--by those very “nutty†polls.
Last weekend, some surveys began indicating that the race was narrowing from the double-digit lead Clinton had been holding. Then, on Wednesday, a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization for CNN and USA Today suggested the race was a statistical dead heat among respondents it defined as those most likely to vote. Clinton led by two percentage points among this group, within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.
The poll was frankly anomalous. Four other surveys surfacing by Thursday gave Clinton 7-to-10 point leads. But the network news coverage generally suggested the race was closer than that. NBC News, for instance, led its Wednesday evening broadcast by saying the margin was anywhere from 2-to-7 points, ignoring a Los Angeles Times Poll released that day that showed it at 10 points.
The CBS “Evening News†led its newscast with the CNN poll Wednesday. The lead story on NBC’s “Today†show Thursday morning began: “The lead is down to five points.â€
If Bush benefited, perhaps even unduly, from this week’s press coverage, Perot did not.
The week began with Perot telling CBS’ “60 Minutes†that he believed a report he had received that the White House was going to smear one of his daughters by releasing a phony, sexually compromising photo of her and disrupting her August wedding ceremony. That was one reason he dropped out of the race in July, he claimed.
Amid angry, vehement White House denials, Perot could offer no proof to back up the claims. And on Monday, Perot demonstrated his temper was stronger than his sense of news management when he burst into an aide’s press briefing to denounce reporters for asking further about the story. The moment led all three network newscasts that night.
“I don’t have to prove anything to you people to start with,†Perot was shown saying, his aides appearing startled and intimidated.
The network newscasts did not take Perot gently into that good night.
On ABC, reporter Morton Dean examined Perot’s renewed claim that Vietnamese-funded hit squads once broke onto his property, apparently with the aim of harming his family, and found much to contradict the Texan’s account. For instance, Perot said one of his dog handlers had chased off the purported assailants; Dean put one of the handlers on camera, who proceeded to deny knowing anything about any such incident.
On NBC, correspondent Lisa Myers said Perot’s allegation of Republican dirty tricks and his reaction to questions about it raised “questions about his character, truthfulness and fitness to be President.â€
Expanding her report, Myers said Perot was “so notorious†for taking “liberty with the truth†that one unnamed source had told her that at his former computer services company, “lying was known as ‘Rossing.’ †The phrase was put on the screen so viewers would not miss it.
By Tuesday, all the networks were noting the loving dad and humble servant of the people depicted in Perot’s infomercials was a different man than the one the public was seeing live and unscripted in news interviews and briefings. What’s more, ABC’s Jeff Greenfield questioned whether the Perot ads had actually delivered the substantive solutions to the country’s problems he said they would. And many of the statistics in Perot’s first chart-laden critique of the American economy, NBC’s Myers reported, were incorrect.
Amid the early focus on Perot and the mid-week spotlight on the polls, Clinton was generally pushed to the background. On Monday, for instance, ABC did not even do a Clinton story. NBC and CBS, meanwhile, featured him reacting to the Bush-Perot flap.
By Wednesday, all three networks were showing Clinton attacking Bush as someone who was not qualified to talk about trust, but then decrying attack politics. It was a message at best mixed, at worst two-faced.
For a candidate who once planned to end the campaign with a series of uplifting speeches on the issues, Clinton not only had changed his strategy to some degree, but he was likely not thrilled with how the media filter was distilling his final messages.
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