Seeing through the spin?
Is the Bush administration losing its deft touch in terms of media manipulation? It was notable (to me, at any rate) that, as I mentioned the other day, President Bush's photo-op at the NBC "Today"/Habitat for Humanity house build was drawing some criticism against both the show and the president. And some of the criticism (e.g., on NPR) also drew attention to how stage-managed Bush's "photo-op" seemed to be. Then. later last week, the President was criticized over a teleconference he gave to a very small and select group of US troops in Iraq. According to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, the pool report (i.e., from the designated reporter on the scene) described the event as follows:
- The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"
Now of course the Bush administration can argue (with some justification) that some sort of "scripting" or "choreographing" is necessary to make the whole thing run smoothly. But the more fundamental question is why the president bothered to do this in the first place? Was there any pressing national security need to talk to just these 11 soldiers? Of course not: it was simply another stagemanaged event to try to spin a news story in the president's direction. This is thus another example of what media historian Daniel Boorstin (who sadly passed away last year) famously called "pseudo events", i.e., stagemanaged events held only for the media and (usually) its television cameras. Boorstin’s groundbreaking 1964 book The Image: A guide to Pseudo-events in America, charted how the rise of the "pesudo-event" was displacing consideration (and coverage) by the media of "real" news (i.e., news that's not laid out on a plate for reporters to lap up.)
But what is different and interesting is to see some media outlets comment on the articiality of this event - interesting because typically most of the MSM like to remain silent about all the artifice and prepackaged "spin" that goes into the news they present; after all, they benefit from the massive "information subsidy" that PR and political "spinners" provide them with to make their job easier. (This information subsidy - a term associated with the work of Penn Annenberg professor Oscar Gandy - allows journalists to look like they're doing a whole lot of work while in reality much of the content they present under their byline is actually "borrowed" from spin doctors and PR professionals pushing a particular point of view.) This time, though, as with the house-building photo-op, a number of media outlets did tentatively point out, in the course of their reporting, the profoudly artificial nature of the teleconference (including the Associated Press, Newsday, Editor & Publisher, and CNN).
So what's going on? Certainly we have consider that, with President Bush's senior advisor and media guru Karl Rove otherwise engaged in giving testimony to the grand jury investigating the Plame Affair, the administration might have lost some of its touch. But other bigger factors might help to explain why the Bush White House might finally be losing its seemingly natural ability to frame the news through skilled news management.
This is hardly to suggest that the pseudo-event's day is passing. Bush's entourage has up till recently been stunningly successful at manipulating the media, setting the political agenda, and framing issues in the way it likes. Notwithstanding Rove's preoccupation elsewhere, the main reason that these tactics are starting to wear thin in this case are strategic, not tactical: the President's public ratings are at all-time lows following Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, soaring energy prices, and a prevailing sense of "malaise" and loss of direction in the country. More and more conservatives are openly questioning the President's handling of the war, the Harriet Miers nomination, and so on. At some point, even today, even the slickest spin machine starts to break down in the face of cold, harsh reality, and the news media (finally) feel emboldened (even if only tentatively) to tackle the administration and comment on issues that previously they had pointedly ignored (much to their discredit). This is a process that is only just beginning to be felt now. It's got a long way to go.
posted by hdougie at 10/15/2005 04:32:00 PM
5 Comments:
I first caught this staged-event on NBC news, they led with the fact that a satellite link was mistakenly left on while the soldiers were being "coached" by a White House aide. Since it was put forth to the news services that it would be a "live" event without such coaching was their storyline. As Professor Bicket points out, the question of why he did this event is pertinent in light of Bush's declining numbers and the need to gain points with the American people. The use by other administrations of this ploy in pseudo-events is nothing new, but to be caught blatantly in its use while trying to pretend it was other than what it was, well... It may have finally backfired on this administration that has used staged events so many times it is hard to tell rality from production anymore. This might very well lead to the news services paying a little less attention to the import of them in the future and a re-thinking of its use by the WHite House.
DJ Smith
When a newspaper recieves a press release, they don't publish it as is (well, hopefully) - they confirm it and cross check it combine it with information with other sources to create a story. Unfortunately, due to the live nature of television, this option does not exist - they must either cover the event or not. Finally, it seems that television media are at least criticizing the event while covering. Hopefully it will soon come to the point where the media begins to ignore the White House's (and everyone else's) psuedo-events as DJ mentioned.
-Jeff DeBellis
I think the fact that some media outlets reported on the stage-managed nature of this event isn't really a sign that they are getting bolder, better, etc. They are doing what they always do: report stories that fit the dominant frame. As you suggest, the only reason this aspect of the story was reported was because the dominant frame has shifted. What with the president's low poll numbers, Republican scandals, hurricanes, etc., the current frame could be summed up as, "Gosh, the Bush administration can't seem to do *anything* right these days." Both the Habitit for Humanity and Iraq teleconference stories were reported under this frame. But under a different frame (say, "President Bush is a strong leader working hard to keep us safe at home and abroad), the "artificialness" aspect of these stories would not have been mentioned.
One last thing. These pseudo-event stories still serve one important function, one the Bush administration still excels at: aiming their spin directly at the usually uncritical local media. You can bet that the hometown press in each of those soldiers' hometowns covered their favorite sons' moment of glory with the Commander in Chief in fairly glowing terms.
I agree with the aformentioned posts and would like to just reiterate the fact that President Bush's approval ratings are falling harder than ever in the wake of the hurricanes and Iraq.
The executive branch "entourage" and its aresenal of spin doctors have always their hand in the cookie jar... with cover-ups,agenda-setting, positive PR, pseudo-events & staging, and even recommending the President to "wag the dog" from time to time to divert attention. After all it is their job.
It has always been a big game of public manipulation and taming factions ever since the Federalist papers were published. However, now that the American majority associates the President's image with disapproval - when they watch him on television and listen to him speak - they are less likely to believe anything they see or hear. These biased citizens make themselves skeptics and more aware of any mistakes or staging that would have otherwise been overlooked, if the President had a more positive image and was more believable. It's almost like forcing a pessimist to attend a bad magic show.
-Ryan DiMillo
In addition to the comments and thoughts already stated, i would like to add that the methods of cross referencing and other information checking not only slows down the news, but that the government is entirely capable of providing the necesary sources to support eachother. The only way to refence in a effective manner would be to completly circumvent any information that the government releases, which would slow down the news so much that America's news seystem would be pretty much incapacitated. So how can media posably be expected to get into the news that the government doesn't want to get out? This is the same question that has been a problem to media personell for a very long time. This is where I think the electronic media can do wonders. If an Iraqi soldier decides to post a blog on something that the government might not want known, the media has access to it anyway. Then why isn't the media using this as an information source? As professor Bicket put it "it's a lot of crap." Does this mean that the fastest source also contains the least amount of reliable information? I think that the most effective way to verify or counter the information released by the government is to utilise the web for cross referencing. Niether one is reliable source of information on their own, but I beleive that if the media would acknowledge the news value of the "crap" on the internet, that media as a whole would acheive a much better understanding of what is going on and have a better ability to see through the frame that the government is choosing for it's news conferences and press releases.
~Christian Foster
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