Originally published by Salon.com March 14, 2005
Copyright 2005 Salon.com, Inc.
By Eric Boehlert
Historians
curious to learn more about the inner workings of the Bush White House
probably know better than to hope for much from Ari Fleischer's new
book, "Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White
House." The former White House spokesman who earned his stripes by
telling beat reporters as little as possible during his two and a half
years behind the podium, before stepping down in May 2003, offers up
little in the form of fresh analysis. Instead, readers learn Bush was
committed to ousting Saddam Hussein, upset by the corporate Enron-like
scandals, and a really great boss: "President Bush runs a very
inclusive, tight ship. He is one of the most uplifting,
personnel-oriented, tough, demanding, humorous bosses you'll ever find."
If
there is a disapproving word, phrase or sentence in the book about the
White House, it's well hidden. That's no surprise, given the
military-like loyalty that runs through his White House. (Former
treasury secretary Paul O'Neill being the one exception to date.) Not
willing to break any new ground dissecting the White House, Fleischer
sets aside large chunks of "Taking Heat" to analyze the press.
His
thesis is that the press has been tough on Bush, not because it has an
inherent liberal bias, but because it's too focused on conflict. At
least that's Fleischer's diplomatic cover story. But it's obvious that
half an inch beneath the surface, Fleischer signs off on the right-wing
consensus about a Democrat-leaning press corps that does not treat
Republicans fairly. He refers again and again to the press's liberal
tendencies, even making the odd suggestion that it's the media's fault
more conservatives don't become journalists. "The field of journalism
only hurts itself when so many people who enter it come from a similar
ideological point of view," he writes, stopping just short of endorsing
a newsroom affirmative action-type program for college Republicans.
By
no means a tell-all memoir, "Taking Heat" does include a few curious
nuggets. Fleischer, whose entire job revolved around dealing with the
press and tracking its work, describes himself as an "avid" reader of
the news, yet he reads only "three or four newspapers a day," which may
be three or four more than his boss, but likely two or three fewer than
what most congressional staffers review each morning. Such was the
accidental tourist nature of being this administration's media point
person. As one White House reporter told Salon at the time of
Fleischer's departure, "Ari had an impossible job. He was supposed to
talk to the press in a White House that does not talk to the press."
Elsewhere
in "Taking Heat," Fleischer, who chastises the press corps for not
checking its facts, writes matter-of-factly that the bungled CBS report
on "60 Minutes Wednesday" last September was based on "forged"
documents, an inaccurate statement. In January, the independent panel
set up by CBS to investigate the matter reported it could not conclude
that the documents were forged.
The book
is filled with curious omissions. There's no reference to Fleischer's
now famous -- and ominous -- warning to a White House reporter who
early in the administration asked a pointed question at a briefing.
Afterward, Fleischer called the reporter at his desk and notified him
his question had been "noted in the building."
And
there's also no mention about how Fleischer, along with off-the-record
White House aides, helped fan the flames of a fabricated 2001 scandal
about exiting Clinton staffers who allegedly trashed the White House.
Just a week in office, Fleischer piqued reporters' interest by
confirming the acts of vandalism were being "catalogued," while aides
lavished journalists with descriptions of phone lines being cut and
trash strewn all over the West Wing. (The General Accounting Office
looked into the matter and concluded those wild accusations were
false.) Nonetheless, Fleischer writes, "Through my first six months on
the job, the press repeatedly tried to bait me into a fight with
President Clinton on a variety of issues. I tried hard not to let them
create a conflict."
Of course it was the
Houston Chronicle (which backed Bush in 2000) that once noted about
Fleischer, "Perhaps not since Ron Ziegler made inoperative statements
on behalf of Richard Nixon, however, has a press secretary exhibited
such a brazen and cavalier disregard for the facts." As for his media
analysis, if Fleischer were addressing only a conservative audience,
his readers might not expect his argument about the press to require
supporting evidence. The "liberal media" myth is entering its fourth
decade of active, endless and professional repetition. But no doubt
hoping that his book will be taken seriously beyond talk radio circles,
Fleischer sets out to try to document the press bias, how it has been
unfairly critical of Bush and adopted a double standard when the
Republican moved into the White House. Not surprisingly, given the
rampant timidity with which the press has treated Bush, that's when
Fleischer's troubles begin.
On page 13, in
one of his first barbs directed at the press, Fleischer complains that
during the contested 2000 election, the press was eager to label the
Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Bush's favor to stop counting votes as
"bitter" and "divided," but days earlier, when the Florida Supreme
Court ruled 4-3 in Gore's favor, reporters shied away from the divisive
nature of the decision to the point where "most Americans would have
thought it was a unified Florida Supreme Court that put Al Gore on the
doorstep of the presidency," according to Fleischer.
But
a quick check of LexisNexis database finds Fleischer pontificating
based on his own press bias, not actual reporting at the time. The
"bitter" and "deeply divided" nature of the Florida Supreme Court
ruling was widely reported (emphasis added in all quotes): "The Florida
Supreme Court drops a bombshell, a deeply divided 4-3 opinion, a split
court, but a legal shot heard around the world," Brian Williams, NBC.
The
"sharply divided Florida Supreme Court ruled 4-3 yesterday that about
12,000 undervotes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties must be
manually recounted," Boston Herald.
"Al
Gore's moribund presidential hopes were dramatically revived Friday
when a sharply divided Florida Supreme Court ordered the immediate
recount by hand of tens of thousands of disputed votes," the Hartford
Courant.
"The Florida Supreme Court, [in
a] bitterly divided 4-to-3 decision for Vice President Gore, stunned so
many people, both Democrats and Republicans alike," David Bloom, NBC.
Examples
like that, which undercut Fleischer's thesis, litter "Taking Heat." For
instance, riding a favorite conservative hobby horse, he complains that
while reporters routinely label Republicans as "conservatives," they
shy away from tagging Democrats as "liberals." "Why have they largely
stopped using the word 'liberal'?" Fleischer wonders.
Stop
using? Just within the last year, according to Nexis, the New York
Times has published 325 articles that contained three or more
references to "liberal," followed by the Washington Post (with 283
articles), Los Angeles Times (266), Associated Press (227), Chicago
Tribune (165), and USA Today (71).
On the
flip side, Fleischer doesn't like the word "progressive": "I don't
really know what a 'progressive' is, but I know the Democrats like the
word and the press use it, particularly in their coverage of social
issues." Compared to the 325 "liberal" articles in the New York Times
over the last 12 months, the paper has generated 39 articles that
feature "progressive" three or more times. (Not all those articles
dealt with politics, and neither did all the "liberal" articles, but
the number gives a fair indication of their use.) In his analysis of
the press, Fleischer argues "liberal" is underused, while "progressive"
is overused, the exact opposite of what's happening.
More
trouble ensues when Fleischer complains about how journalists use (or
don't use) "social liberal" compared to "social conservative."
Fleischer writes, "I don't think I've ever seen the phrase 'social
liberal' in the press." Had Fleischer searched Nexis for U.S. media
mentions containing the phrase "social liberal" that appeared between
2001 and 2003 -- the time Fleischer served as press secretary -- he
would have seen the 725 matches it retrieved.
He
then complains that the press routinely adopts Democratic phrases in
its reporting. He recalls one White House briefing when he was asked,
"If you're not afraid of going after special interests, including those
that supported [Bush] like big tobacco, big pharmaceuticals..."
Fleischer is annoyed: "Big oil"? "Big tobacco"? Aren't those former
Vice President Al Gore's words?" he writes, slapping the press for
using the "lexicon of the left." Of course the phrase "big tobacco" was
not popularized by Gore or any other Democrat. It's been in common use
for decades. In fact, among the first mentions found by Nexis comes
from the Dec. 15, 1977, issue of Forbes magazine, not exactly known as
a hotbed of liberal journalism.
On the
cusp of the war with Iraq, Fleischer recalls how on March 18, 2003,
"someone [inside the West Wing] pointed out how muted the coverage was
of Tony Blair's dramatic win in Parliament authorizing the [U.K.] use
of force against Iraq. After weeks of coverage about how much trouble
Blair was in, his victory didn't get much press."
The
vote in Parliament actually represented an embarrassing setback for
Blair, since 139 members of his own Labor Party deserted him on the
vote, a point Fleischer ignores. Second, here is a sample of the U.S.
news organizations that supposedly "muted" coverage of the Parliament
vote: Associated Press, Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Charleston (S.C.)
Gazette, Charlotte Observer, Chicago Tribune (which ran the story on
the front page), CNN, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Knight Ridder, Los
Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, NBC, New York Times, New York
Post, Newsday, Orlando Sentinel, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Petersburg
Times, Tallahassee Democrat, UPI, USA Today, Voice of America and the
Wichita Eagle.
Fleischer also complains
that reporters, letting their supposed Democratic bias seep through,
fail to label the American Civil Liberties Union a "liberal"
organization even though they're quick to tag a group like Club for
Growth as "conservative." Here's a partial list of the news outlets
that have referred to the ACLU as "liberal" in the last 12 months:
Bergen (N.J.) Record, San Antonio Express-News, Associated Press, Time,
Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, Sacramento Bee, Minneapolis
Star-Tribune, Newsday, Seattle Post Intelligencer, United Press
International, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chattanooga Times Free
Press, Kansas City Star, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune,
International Herald Tribune, CNN, and Dallas Morning News.
When
not critiquing the press through the language it opts for, Fleischer
most often tries to prove his point by playing back exchanges he had
during some of his 300 White House press briefings. But Fleischer
leaves out important context. For instance, time and again he cites
hostile questions posed by Helen Thomas, the grande dame of the White
House press corps, as an example of just how agenda-driven liberal
reporters can be. (Thomas: "Why does [Bush] want to drop bombs on
innocent Iraqis?") The truth is, even though Thomas grabs more mentions
in "Taking Heat" than any other journalist, she is irrelevant when it
comes to setting the agenda inside the Beltway. She wields no real
power and her pointed barbs do not reflect the general mood of the
White House press corps. If Fleischer were able to point to a reporter
from the New York Times or Washington Post or NBC who asked
antagonizing questions on a daily basis, then his charge would stick.
But he cannot. Instead he uses Thomas as a convenient foil.
And
to take step back, Fleischer, focusing so intently on White House
reporters (and their limited role), ignores the Republican media
revolution that's going on all around him. It's an insurgency that puts
to shame any hint of Democratic partisan activity inside the White
House press room. (For Fleischer's purposes Fox News barely exists,
garnering just five mentions within "Taking Heat's" 400 pages.) Let's
face it, a blatantly partisan conservative host on Fox News or MSNBC,
who programs his shows around GOP talking points and treats facts as
fungible objects has far more impact on the political dialogue
nationwide than a wide-eyed liberal White House news reporter whose
editor demands he write balanced, factual stories, but might allow him
to ask loaded questions in front of 19 other reporters at White House
briefings.
Again, Fleischer pretends the
events at the briefings define political journalism. They do not.
They're an increasingly irrelevant sideshow. The important,
substantative work of covering the administration does not occur during
the televised give-and-take inside the White House press room, in part
because so little information is ferreted out.
In
the end, Fleischer's argument that the Beltway press's reporting is
clouded by fundamental bias doesn't withstand scrutiny, and Fleischer
himself is proof of that. Arguably the most famous phrase he ever
uttered during his years behind the White House podium occurred just
weeks after the 9/11 attack. Asked about late night comedian Bill
Maher's comments that launching U.S. cruise missiles 2,000 miles away
from their target was "cowardly" compared to 9/11 attackers who gave
their lives, Fleischer said: "All Americans need to watch what they
say, watch what they do." Fleischer insists his comment was taken out
of context, and to prove it, he points approvingly to ABC's Ted Koppel,
who one night reviewed Fleischer's quote and informed "Nightline"
viewers, "Ari Fleischer got a bum rap on that one."
In this case at least, Koppel was able to keep his Democratic "bias" in check.