# Posted 1:52 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FOLLOWING THE PAPER TRAIL: In July, I had a plan. Instead of throwing away my print editions of the NY Times from the week of the Democratic convention, I decided to put them aside and wait until the Republican convention had passed so that I could compare how the Paper of Record had covered both events.

This post will address a very specific question: How did the NYT portray each candidate's comments about Iraq the morning after his speech? The answer is that it didn't. Even though the Times itself often describes Iraq as "a pivotal electoral issue", Adam Nagourney -- who wrote or co-wrote the lead story on both Bush and Kerry's nomination speeches -- somehow managed to avoid the subject.

In the lead story on Bush's speech, the word 'Iraq' only appears once, and in the following context:

Mr. Kerry said..."I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have, by those who misled America into Iraq."

Now, perhaps, if Mr. Bush had ignored Iraq himself, Nagourney's approach would be justified. But here is just some of what Mr. Bush had to say about Iraq:

We knew Saddam Hussein's record of aggression and support for terror. We knew his long history of pursuing, even using, weapons of mass destruction. And we know that September the 11th requires our country to think differently: We must, and we will, confront threats to America before it is too late. (Applause.)

In Saddam Hussein, we saw a threat...

Members of both political parties, including my opponent and his running mate, saw the threat, and voted to authorize the use of force...

Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are history, more than 50 million people have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East...

Despite ongoing acts of violence, Iraq now has a strong Prime Minister, a national council, and national elections are scheduled for January. Our nation is standing with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, because when America gives its word, America must keep its word...

So our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: We will help new leaders to train their armies, and move toward elections, and get on the path of stability and democracy as quickly as possible. And then our troops will return home with the honor they have earned...

I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of
American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region.

I could provide additional examples, but I'm sure that all of you have either read or listened to the President's speech. Yet somehow, not one of the passages cited above made it into either Nagourney's lead article or Todd Purdum's news analysis column.

To be fair, Mr. Bush gave a very long speech. Perhaps it simply was not possible for Mr. Nagourney or Mr. Purdum to cover all that he said. Of course, Mr. Nagourney did have time to write that

As he did in 2000, Mr. Bush warmed the audience with self-deprecatory jokes, including one about his tendency toward malapropisms...

Before [the President] walked out Republicans handed out hundreds of placards reading, "Agenda for America," which they waved in a blizzard of American flags...

Mr. Bush, the 43rd president, smiled at the 41st president and his wife - that would be George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush - sitting in a box across the hall.

Somehow, Mr. Nagourney decided that self-deprecatory jokes, American flags, and smiling at one's parents were more newsworthy than the President's bold and controversial statements about Iraq.

(If Matt Yglesias were covering Bush's speech for the Times, he at least would've had the decency to quote Mr. Bush at length and then explain why he was lying.)

In contrast to Mr. Nagourney, Mr. Purdum does devote a respectable amount of attention to Mr. Bush's relationship with Iraq, even if he refuses to divulge what Mr. Bush himself actually said. Here are the contexts in which Mr. Purdum refers to Iraq:

For a nation divided over his stewardship, distressed about the economy and dubious about the war with Iraq, President Bush had one overriding message last night: He's still the one...

Mr. Bush spoke confidently but saved his passion for national security issues, and sounded a tone of defiance at critics of his decision to invade Iraq...

No one...can dispute that [Bush] has [led], first by steamrolling big
tax cuts through a compliant Congress, then toppling the Taliban and winning support for the controversial war with Iraq...

Even his father's former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft... warned two years ago against rushing to war with Iraq...

Polls showAmericans have doubts about Mr. Bush's stubbornness, his truthfulness (only about one in five Americans now think he is telling the entire truth when he talks about Iraq), and even the likeability that helped him so much last time.

How strange. It almost seems as if Mr. Purdum has some sort of agenda. While the author of a news analysis column has more latitude than the author of a straight news article, one would hope that Mr. Purdum would at least analyse what Mr. Bush actually said.

Instead, he reminds us again and again of how "dubious" and "controversial" the invasion was while not even bothering to quote Mr. Bush's defense of it or mention that most Americans supported it.

But perhaps I shouldn't be suprised with the way the NY Times has covered this issue. As I show in my dissertation, when Ronald Reagan spoke passionately and at great length about democracy promotion in the 1980s, the NYT and WaPo ignored what he said and instead focused on the more controversial aspects of his foreign policy.

It's like deja vu all over again...

Coming up next: The NYT, Kerry and Iraq.

(0) opinions -- Add your opinion