Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:08                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 01:All's Fair - Excerpt [01/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

The following is a chapter excerpt from the book, "All's Fair: Love, War
and Running for President", a political memoir by Mary Matalin (Republican)
and James Carville (Democrat). They were opposing strategists for the Bush and
Clinton campaigns during the 1992 Presidential election. This particular chapter
deals with the powerful influence that the media played in this campaign. They
provide insights from their respective sides of the political fence.

ISBN - 0-679-43103-9
Dewey Decimal - 324.973

** This is posted for informational and educational purposes only **


*** Begin Excerpt ***

                             Chapter 10


Mary Matalin
------------

Someone in the media has an original thought. One. Then the
entire national press corps is done for the day or week, sometimes
longer. Once the press line has been established, you can work for
hours, days, even an entire campaign and not budge it. This is pretty
infuriating when they're not seeing things your way. Which is pretty
much all the time. The only thing to do is get out there when the
story line is being created and demand they hear your side.
My reporter friends insist that they don't advocate or condemn a
candidacy. What they say they do is follow the polls. If a candidate is
on a downward slide, they pile on. If a candidacy is in an ascending
trajectory, they pump it up. At least in the beginning, I suppose that's
true; they generally don't pick a candidate and go out and support
him. In the end, they like the fight.

Campaign operatives learn quickly there are rules for dealing with
the press, and there are rules for them dealing with you. I got taugt
by one of the American originals, the syndicated columnist Jules Wit-
cover who has covered every presidential campaign since Eisenhower
versus Stevenson. I love the guys (and they were mostly guys) who
literally hung out with John F. Kennedy in one of the last races where
you could hang out with the candidates. They have endless great war
stories and are less knee-jerk in their coverage than the younger
supporters. Jules in particular has a perspective. He doesn't get exer-
cised over the day-to-day events of the campaign so much as he con-
siders "What did this whole week add up to?" or "How does this event
fit into the bigger scheme of things?" The older guys always come at
it with a wider view.

Witcover is especially fastidious about "the rules." When I first got
into national politics and was learning the ropes he told me, "Look, let
me explain something to you. If you don't want your name attached
to a story, you say 'I'm on background.' If you only want your
thoughts used and not your words or your name, say you're on 'deep
background.' If you don't want me to use anything, you go 'off the
'record.' In all other cases, you're on the record. I'm going to print
what you say. That's just how it works."

It sounded easy. But when you're first talking to the press you feel
like a jerk saying, "This is on background." Some time later, Jules and
I were talking about the abortion issue. I was spouting off about how
I thought the debate and dialogue had matured on both sides. To sub-
stantiate my point, I referenced the absence of screaming rhetoric
with an unfortunate choice of words: "You don't see 'fetuses,' you
don't see 'hangers' dominating the debate." It's an easy topic to get
graphic about. He printed it.

My riff became the "Quote of the Day" in _Hotline, the political
junkie's bible. When I saw it I called Jules immediately.

"How could you do this to me?"

"You know the rules. You should have said, 'I'm on background.'

It was a lesson I learned on the spot. He showed me not only how
the system worked, but by cutting me no slack whatsoever, he taught
me in practical terms that no one is going to give you anything. You
can't call people back after something has come out of your mouth
and say, "I meant that on background" and expect them to let you off
the hook. It's a judgment call on their part. I have on more than one
occasion really screwed up and had to go back and ask a reporter not
to print something I'd said. I meant to say it on background or I didn't
mean to say it at all. My usual line is "I'll give you my firstborn male
child if you don't use it." If you're really in a lot of pain sometimes
they'll let you slide. Of course, as the world works, that means next
time you've got to give them some real juicy tidbits. You owe them.


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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:03                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 02:All's Fair - Excerpt [02/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

You talk at your own peril. In the press it breaks out in the same
way it does with all human beings: Some people have a strict code of
honor which they adhere to under all circumstances, and some do
not. You only learn who's honorable and who isn't through experi-
ence. There are blatant violations of the code, and spiritual violations.
A blatant violation is obvious: A reporter quotes you after you've
specified you're on background or off the record. You get really wary
with that guy then; nothing is off the record, even when you specifi-
cally stipulate it's off the record.

Spiritual violations are trickier. Because of the way I talk, my
rhetoric is identifiable. In the 1992 campaign if they used one of my
"Maryspeak" lines unattributed (as in "a source close to the cam-
paign"), they burned me. If a reporter quotes a background source in
a way that's clearly identifiable, and they know it, that's a spiritual
violation.

My gender also caused problems. Reporters could never say "she"
when referring to their source because Torie and I were basically the
only "she's" on background from the campaign. So they had to resort
to tortuous sentence construction, which pretty much gave us up any-
way. They couldn't say "he said," because that would be a lie, and
couldn't say "she said," because that would reveal us, but an ungen-
dered quote implied they were covering up for a woman.

The relationship between operative and reporter is a precarious
detente based on mutually assured destruction. Operatives use their
power as the source of information to control the agenda; reporters
use their power as disseminators of the operatives' information to
expand the agenda. But a source's power is very tenuous because
there's only one way to enforce it and that is to state your position and
nothing else. However, since no reporter wants to be your shill, they'll
always try to drag something, usually something stupid, out of you. If
they get it, you've become a leak.

Negative leaks-information or perspective that works against your
candidate's best interests-are obviously bad. But not _all_ leaks are
bad. If you want to get a behind-the-scenes story out about your guy
that shows him clearly in command in a quasi-crisis, or moved to tears
over some American tragedy-whatever-you can leak a reporter an
_exclusive_ peek at your guy's private moment, and chances are he'll
print it just because no one else has it. Reporters aren't in the business
of making your guy look good, but that's a good leak.

Another one is the floating of an idea in the press without attribu-
tion, just to gauge the reaction. If it gets shot down by pundits and
colleagues, you deny your campaign said it; if it's embraced, you put
it out formally with your guy's name attached.

A problem with incumbents is they hate bad leaks so much that
they start clamping down on _all_ leaks, and you lose a very useful tool.
Eliminating leaks is near to impossible, but John Sununu had a
Gestapo method that infuriated everyone. First of all, we Bush loyal-
ists never ever leaked anything negative about the President. That
stuff came from detractors around town, all attributed to "a source
close to the White House" or "a GOP activist." Well, that could be
anyone in D.C. _who wasn't a Democrat!_ But Sununu had his assistant
come in every morning at four-thirty or five o'clock and yellow-high-
light all the unnamed quotes; then they'd speculate as to the identity
of the source, and with no other evidence than their suspicions, report
"leakers" to President Bush.

For reasons I've never figured out, I was on Sununu's hit list early.
It started getting back to me that Bush was unhappy with my "leaks"
to _Washington Post_ reporter Ann Devroy.

If I'd had a harpoon, I'd have speared Sununu. I never leaked to
Devroy. Sununu couldn't control his own traitorous troops at the
White House, so he told Bush the leaks were coming from the out-
side. Sununu was executing his political enemies by falsely accusing
them of committing Bush's worst peeve. The upshot was that the cir-
cle of Bush supporters outside the White House quit working the
press out of fear that we'd get blamed for negative leaks. In the crit-
cal months leading up to the campaign, our press relations had degen-
erated significantly; no one could return political calls except Sununu,
and he had the political acumen of a doorknob.

When we worked the media we stuck to our story. When it comes
to _policy_ issues, sticking to your story, while boring for the media, is
good for America. The leadership of this country should be focused,

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:05                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 03:All's Fair - Excerpt [03/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

should be able to tell the American people where we're going. A
united voice from the administration gives the public a clear view of
its direction; clarity gives the public confidence. That's why unified
"talking points" are so important. Sure, they limit the scope of an
issue, and sticking to them leaves you open to charges of media
manipulation, but when you're working off talking points you have a
better chance of projecting coordinated policy which is what the
public expects and deserves from the leadership of the nation. Stick-
ing to your story on _political_ issues is a lot tougher.

A perfect example of how the lack of talking points can kill you is
the media hubbub around the 1988 nomination of Dan Quayle for
vice president.

At the GOP convention in New Orleans, no one knew who the VP
nominee would be. Every morning at seven we had a logistical meet-
ing detailing the events of the day. We'd receive our talking points and
then spend the rest of the day disseminating them to the delegates and
the press. Right before we would go on the convention floor we would
regroup and be told, "Here's the theme for the night. Here's your talk-
ing points." Campaign media "bookers" spent their whole day schedul-
ing GOP spokesmen, and from four in the aftemoon until the
convention's evening session was gaveled to order around seven-thirty
that night, nonstop, we'd each do sixty or seventy stand-up interviews
with local and national radio and TV. You go from one microphone to
another, perpetually disoriented and exhausted. You're just a piece of
meat and you say the same thing over and over again.

Vice President Bush revealed his selection to no one until the last
conceivable minute, the afternoon he arrived in New Orleans. Every-
one was caught off guard and unprepared. Surprises at conventions
are the last thing you want; everything is scripted and planned for
down to the minute. Once you're there, you're on autopilot. A sur-
prise is like losing an engine in midflight. The lack of preparation
for Quayle's selection was more like a midair collision.

The press was even crazier than we were. They hate secrets and live
in mortal fear of getting scooped. They were hyperventilating by the
time they got the word, and they pounced on Quayle.

We were clueless. We'd been given briefing books on every con-
ceivable selection, from Kemp to Dole: their backgrounds, what we
should say about them, why they were the perfect selection ...
We'd gotten nothing on Quayle.

No one knew who Dan Quayle was. Obviously we knew he was
the junior senator from Indiana, but the surprise of the selection
extended even to the research gurus. The big-cheese briefers slunk
into the pre-convention organization room and handed us a single
photocopied page from the _Almanac of American Politics.

Now, that's a great resource tool if you already know the basic phi-
losophy of the politician you're looking up. It tells you what commit-
tees they serve on, their margin of victory Ronald Reagan's vote
history in their district, their congressional voting record. It's an
invaluable reference book, but that's all.

And that's all we got. Nothing about Dan Quayle's politics, his per-
sonality, his character. Worse, no written points detailing a political or
philosophical explanation for his surprise selection. We went into
battle unarmed. Amongst ourselves we bunched up and whispered,
"Wasn't he involved in that Paula Parkinson thing?" We were given no
political information whatsoever. Not even any backgrounder on
"Who is this guy?" Nobody even knew what he looked like. Most
deadly, we had no damage-control points on his heaviest political
baggage, his service in the National Guard.

When the frenzy around Dan Quayle erupted, nobody could beat
it back because nobody had any talking points. lf we'd known his
strengths we could have spotlighted them. We were unprepared and
it cost him his public image. I will always contend that his unfortu-
nate and undeserved reputation as a dim bulb can be laid directly at
the feet of the people who didn't give us any damn talking points. He
took all these hits and we didn't know how to defend him.

The press makes talking points seem like thought control. They're
not; they're just all the good things you can say about a subject rolled
into one. It's disorienting for the public, subject to intense informa-
ion bombardment, to receive inconsistent blather from their govern-
ment and their candidates.

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:05                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 04:All's Fair - Excerpt [04/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

If political operatives were the media's only source of information,
the power would be all ours-which is why running a tight ship was
so successful in the Reagan White House. But we rarely control the
agenda, because reporters always have the option, which they exer-
cise with regularity, of calling around us. Once they find another way
in, we are forced to talk to them on their terms.

The best hope for any success once you're in their web is to abide
by a few cardinal rules for dealing with the media.

Cardinal rule #1: No matter what, don't lie to the press. You can say
"I don't know." (Some politicos simply cannot form their lips to say "I
don't know" which I think is stupid. If I'm not in possession of the
facts it's always safest to own up to it.) You can say "I can't tell you,"
or my favorite, "With bamboo shoots under my freshly manicured
fingernails I would never tell you," or the ever popular "That's my
story and I'm sticking to it." But you cannot lie. Not on background,
not off the record, never. Forget that lying is unethical. If a source
ever lies to a reporter and gets caught, you will forever after be tor-
mented by that reporter. They will play with you like a kid pulling
the wings off a fly.

The flip side of lying to a reporter is being misquoted by one, or
being taken out of context in a malicious way. When a journalist
betrays you, you have only one defense weapon: You don't return
their phone calls. They have burned a source.

Cardinal rule #2: Never let them get hungry. Rule #2A: Feed them as
well as you are being fed. They're riding around in buses all day they're
bored, they're hot, they're cold, they're hungry. On one trip the cam-
paign got hot food, the press got stale sandwiches. Very bad idea.
These people are, as Jules Witcover said, captives to convenience. If
they're starving, if they can't get to a phone, if you don't get them a
text of a speech and they have to recall it all themselves or go back
and listen to their tape recorders, they get cranky. It's not like they're
going to write better stories if you take care of them, but if they're
feeling cranky they're going to write cranky.

Cardinal rule #3: Remember their deadline needs.  Forget road
events after four P.M. Reporters have to (a) hook up their laptop
computers; (b) retrieve their notes and recordings; (c) construct a
coherent story; (d) feed it to their home base; (e) explain it to their
editors; (f) backtrack on their editors questions. The crunch time for
most dailies is five to seven P.M. Unless there's some extraordinary
event, first editions are put to bed by eight P.M., so beat stories have
to be in by seven. Anything you say or do after that time is a tree
falling in the forest. Electronic press has an even earlier cutoff point.
They generally like to use footage from afternoon events for the
nightly news.

Cardinal rule #4: Don't tire them out. Even if the candidate can do
six events in a day, and a lot of times he has to, that translates to
events in reporters' body time. If we're leaving the White House at
six in the morning, they're leaving home at four-thirty. If we get
home at ten at night, they get home at one. The press don't get chauf-
feured motorcades to their homes.

You can't take these guys out on the road for ten days and wear
them out. They get overtired and they miss the story. After two days
all they want to do is write out their notes and go to sleep. You can't
get a good spin on the story because they've lost it.

Cardinal rule #5: Remember they may be libera1 scum but they're still
human beings. Since I'm a conservative, my first reaction to the press
in toto, is that they re a scurrilous bunch. But as a Midwesterner, I
always react to people in general by liking them. Some people are
wary when they first meet strangers; my first reaction to anyone I
don't know is to like them. I always consider individuals first. And
I've always liked reporters as individuals. They're smart, they're
informed, they're hardworking. They're kind of creative, they're
ambitious, they have interesting lives. In the soul of every good
reporter is really a novelist or historian. They're the kind of people
I'm attracted to.

Some of them, I know, aren't going to like me on general principles.
They just have preconceived notions about conservatives, like they're
looking for a pulsating 666 on my forehead. Nothing I can do about
those people. For instance, I think in real life I would like liberal
columnist Michael Kinsley if I ever got to know him. But he's one of

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:06                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 05:All's Fair - Excerpt [05/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

those guys who I just know is going to hate me no matter what comes
up. If you know somebody's going to hate you then your first reaction
is, at a minimum, to be wary. And probably not to like them before
they don't like you, so you don't feel rejected. So I basically always
stayed away from predictable libs.

But most of the regulars who reported on and traveled with the
campaign were really good people. One time in Michigan I was blab-
bing with my old pals and missed Air Force One. I got stuck on the
press plane, or the animal plane, as we called it, which is when I really
developed an understanding of the physical demands of their job. Air
Force One was "wheels up" two hours earlier; the press were still on
the ground filing their stories. Their plane was crowded and disorga-
nized and buzzing. No stewards, individual phones, copy machines,
or hot food. This was flying steerage.

It was alien territory. When I got on I flopped down in the front
and stated, "I'm having a glass of wine and I don't want to hear any-
thing from any of you guys, okay? I don't want any questions, I don't
want any badgering, I don't want anything. Let's just have a couple of
drinks here and chill out."

So we had, like, half a drink and they started asking questions.

I begged, "I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. I'm going up with
the pilot if you guys don't shut up."

Susan Spencer of CBS and Ann Compton of ABC were sitting
behind me. I love those two. Separate from all of this is a kind of
camaraderie among women. Not an "I am woman, I am strong, we're
all oppressed and we're in this together" kind of bond. It's more, "Oh
thank God we can talk about PMS" kind of thing. Women are always
subliminally conscious of the extra burdens that fall on women who
do these kinds of jobs. As in, no one takes out our dry cleaning, no
one cleans our house, no one gets the groceries ... None of the
women have wives.

So we were bonding and some man, who hadn't heard my self-pro-
claimed set of rules for that leg of the trip, trolled up from the back
of the plane and started being a reporter.

"Don't ask her questions!" Susan Spencer snapped. "Leave her
alone."

Okay this is sexist, but I have a special affection for women
reporters. They generally work their stories harder than the guys do,
they always get multiple sources for their information, they usually
keep an open mind. It is a rare instance when a woman would not let
me give my side, or didn't try to confirm it once l'd given it. I can't
remember one Sunday afternoon the entire campaign when I wasn't
bothered, even at home, by Robin Toner of _The New York Times. The
girl just never quit working.

Ann Devroy of _The Washington Post is a very special case. She
understands politics. Politics is not a science, it's an art form. Some
reporters don't get that. Some politicians don't get it. Ann does. I
love talking to reporters who understand politics, and I love talking to
Ann ... even when she was blasting us, which was about every day.

I first met Devroy in 1988 when she was the _Post's political editor,
which meant that all the political reporters would funnel their stories
back to her desk and she would decide what got in and what needed
more digging. She was alway fair. She would call up and say, "So-and-
so has filed a story from Michigan. Are these all the facts? Are we
going in the right direction?" She was very precise about her work.
Before and after her editorial assignment she was on the White House
beat. She knew it better than we did.

Devroy had covered George Bush from the beginning of time. She
knew him inside out, which of course worked to our detriment. She
has a photographic memory and didn't even need to look at her files.
If the President said something that did not in every aspect and detail
reflect what he had said in the past, she knew it and had no qualms
about calling it to the world's attention.

She has a galaxy of sources, from secretaries to janitors to Hill
insiders. The whine of her competitors was that everyone leaked to
her because she was _The Washington Post, but the fact was she dug
like crazy. She'd have her facts all lined up and her story down cold
and then she'd call and put you in the position of confirming or deny-

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:06                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 06:All's Fair - Excerpt [06/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

ing. She broke a lot of big stories but she was always fair.

Nobody lied to Ann. If you lied to Ann she'd haunt you for the rest
of your life. She would specifically keep calling you so she could put
you in her story and trash you. You just don't lie to Devroy.

The White House hated her guts. Called her the Bitch Queen.
They never said Ann Devroy's name over there, they always said "the
bitch" and everybody knew who it was.

She is a good reporter and my good friend. We used to laugh on the
campaign that my biggest sin was not being Carville's girlfriend, it
was being Devroy's girlfriend.

Right now I am breaking another cardinal rule: Never thank a
reporter for doing a good job. It's the worst thing you can do to a
reporter. Michael Wines of _The New York Times wrote a piece during
the general election campaign that just stuck out as totally and com-
pletely fair. Because it was almost a once-in-a-campaign occurrence, I
remember reading his piece, putting down the paper and saying out
loud, "Oh my God, I can't believe somebody actually wrote what was
happening." Torie Clarke and some others of us who were on the trail
at the time went to Michael that day and said, "Thank you for a fair
piece. " He looked at us like we had the plague.

There are very few secrets on a campaign. The next thing we
heard, a bunch of other reporters were grousing about Wines and
accusing him of being a shill for Bush, of being "in the tank." By pay-
ing him a compliment we had compromised him. Reporters will
always warn you, "Just don't say anything good about me, it'll ruin
my career."

James Carville
-------------

The other side of that is when a reporter pulls you aside and
says, "I want you to know I'm voting for you guys. "

I don't want to hear about it. "No, man, don't tell me that." That
guy, he's going to go out of his way to screw you. It's almost like some
affirmative-action program. Because they like you they figure they've
got to be really tough on you to be "fair" to the other side.


Mary Matalin
------------

Campaign coverage swings like a pendulum. I think the grossly
generous press treatment of Clinton in the general election, for exam-
ple, was an overreaction to their overkill in the primaries. Their
excuse for being so tough on Bush in '92 was that they felt they had
gone easy on him in '88. They also conceded they were punishing us
for not running as tight an operation this time as we did then. They
gave us grudging respect for '88, they gave us no latitude for the
looseness of the '92 operation.

James Carville
--------------

No one understands the power of the media in this country. I
went into this campaign believing they were powerful. I didn't know.
The power they have is staggering. And they really do guard it.
They like to think of themselves as learned and insightful and
thoughtful and considered. They claim the mantle of truth. Hell,
truth is the make instant snap judgments and after that all of their
time, all of their energy, all of their creativity is spent on nothing but
validating their original judgment. Something happens and three
minutes after the event they all talk to each other and decide "This is
the story," and the story must remain thus in perpetuity. They claim
the moral high ground; their job is to report facts and tell people the
truth. But information is secondary to them, self-justification is pri-
mary. Once the collective media mind is made up, it will not change.

Until you understand that, you can never understand the media.
_Their original take is the one that's going to last._ Knowing this, as a
political strategist, it is your imperative to get out there right away
and make sure your side of the story is the one they see and hear and
write and say. That is why you have to be in the first news cycle, not
the follow-up; that is why we try everything to get our story out first
and best. It's why we went down first in New Hampshire and claimed

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:06                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 07:All's Fair - Excerpt [07/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

victory. History gets created in about three minutes. Don't miss it. If
you get there a moment too late, you're dead.

Once they've got their story they stick to it. At some point they
stop thinking about an issue and just pursue it. There's no one who
has dealt with the national media who has not gotten any number of
phone calls saying, "I'm writing a story and I want to say this. Can you
say it for me?" Reporters try to get you to say what they want you to
say not what you've got to say. If you say what _you_ want to say, they
keep coming back to try and get you to say what _they_ want you to say.
I tell them, "Look, we're going to be on this phone an awful long
time. Now, do you want me to tell you what I think? Because I'm not
going to tell you what you _want_ me to think."

They made up this phrase, "spin doctors." The word "spin," I think,
means what political strategists do when we go out and put our can-
didate in the most favorable light. That's what spin is. Well la-di-da,
guess what? They re right. What do you want me to say? Of course,
That's my job. Why don't the media just admit the truth about them-
selves, that they're way more into self-justification than information?
Then we could go on from there.

Take, for example, Bill Clinton. Here was a guy who was my age,
who grew up in the South, who cut his teeth on his passion for civil
rights and his opposition to the war in Vietnam. And a bunch of Yan-
kee yuppie reporters decided that he was Slick Willie. It's an article
faith among the national media that Bill Clinton was an ambitious
politician who tailored his positions to get elected since the doctor
slapped him on his butt when he was born.

I kept saying, "What are you guys talking about? Do you really
think that a guy who was an utterly totally ambitious political animal
would have as his two defining moments entering politics his opposi-
tion to the Vietnam war and his passion for civil rights? Look, I'm the
same age as him. Do you think that a political consultant, if he was
conniving to get his guy governor of Arkansas, would have said,
"What you've got to do is go to Texas and be George McGovern's
campaign manager. And you have to take a really strong civil rights
stand'? Are you guys nuts?"

They would listen to me but they would never accept any evidence
to the contrary. They couldn't say, "This is a complex man who has
beliefs, and who, like a lot of politicians, is ambitious." If an undeni-
able fad runs counter to the story they want to write, they will ignore
the fact.

They try to be honest people. A lot of them I like. But they're so
into self-justification that they have turned journalism into the one
institution in America with the least capacity for self-examination
and self-criticism. If a political professional criticizes them they say
it's the government that's doing it and hide behind the First Amend-
ment. These people think the First Amendment belongs to them. It
doesn't; it belongs to the American people. The ultimate arrogance is
that they view any criticism as some sort of censorship or media-
bashing. Democrats have Republicans to criticize us; Republicans
have Democrats to criticize them. Ford's got GM, GM's got Ford. But
the media, they never criticize each other. Thou shalt speak no evil of
another reporter.

There is a natural conflict between reporters and campaign strate-
gists. Reporters, from the day they walk into journalism school, news is
defined to them as "something different." Every day the media get up,
they're looking for something new and different to report. What cam-
paign strategists are about is focus, repetition, consistency. Every day we
get up, we're trying to get them to report the same thing over and over.

So how do we get them to do it?

If you want schoolchildren to eat spinach, you cannot serve them
hamburger. If you give them a choice, they ain't going to eat spinach.
Now you can trick them a little bit. You can put some Parmesan
cheese on the spinach, you can put on some olive oil, some garlic, you
can saute it, you can add some mushrooms, some hot bacon drippings.
But you've got to have spinach. Kids don't like spinach every day.
They want cheeseburgers and ice cream, so it's an ongoing struggle.

The media's dietary habits are not particularly healthful. They kind
of like their high-fat foods, like cheese fries and patty melts: Gennifer
Flowers, Hillary's hairdo. They're not too big on the garden vegeta-
bles of the campaign, like job creation and health care costs. And usu-

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Area : I_UFO

Date : Sun Jul 14, 17:07                                                       
From : Don Allen                                                1:3618/2
To   : All                                 
Subj : 08:All's Fair - Excerpt [08/08]                                       
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

ally, the further down the food chain you go, the worse the dietary
habits get. New York tabloids, they like really greasy cheeseburgers,
like whether you inhale or not.

Candidates are always asking, "Was the media happy?" Our job is
not to make them happy; their job is not to make us happy. Our job
is to get them to report what we think the campaign message is. Their
job is to report what they think is news and controversy. So we have
to make our ideas look controversial. We have to make them look
appetizing. We've got to cook this spinach at the right temperature.

I can show you poll after poll that says that people don't vote based
solely on the abortion issue. But I guarantee you that for every story
out of Washington on education funding there are twenty on abortion
funding. Why? Everybody's for education; there's no inherent conflict
there. On abortion you've got interest groups on each side, you've got
fire, you've got rhetoric. It's a point of conflict. It's cheeseburgers.

I think there are very few dishonest people in the media. Do I think
they are out of touch? Yes. Do I think that they love to cover them-
selves more than they do the candidates? Yes. Do I think that they
like to create news where sometimes it doesn't exist? Yes. And do I
think that they feed off each other and look at stories in a pack? Yes,
I do. But do I think they're bad people? Quite clearly the answer in
almost all instances is no.

One of the shabbiest journalistic techniques that I know of is the
man-in-the-street interview. Reporters go out and interview ten peo-
ple. Do they report back that nine out of ten were for Clinton or for
health care or pro-choice? No. They put one person on the air saying
one thing and one saying the exact opposite, so they can give equal
weight to the positions. In the guise of equal time they have badly
skewed what people really think. We call it "equivalency journalism"
and it's a very bad trait.

There seems to be more tolerance for sloppiness now than there has
been before. If a reporter gets a fact wrong, more often than not he's
not even upset. A journalist ought to be outraged by a factual error; it
calls into question the profession's entire credibility. At the very least
they should say "I can't believe I did that. I feel terrible." But I've
never seen a reporter kick a trash can over the fact that he made an
error. Mostly it's "Oh, well, okay what do you want me to do about it?
I'm on deadline. You gonna call my editor and get me in trouble?" I'm
not likely to do that, I've got to work with these people. Maybe you
get a retraction. But an original error in a page one story isn't properly
corrected by a retraction on page A20. Other reporters pick up the
incorrect story and it just keeps getting spread over and over again.

The real change in media coverage is the emerging power of CNN.
CNN has become a very very important player in presidenrial cam-
paigns. _Headline News as much as anything, but certainly CNN news
more than regular network news.

It used to be that the Associated Press had the real effect on cam-
paign coverage. _The New York Times, _The Washington Post, and the
other majors are all morning papers, while the AP serviced afternoon
papers with the frst take on breaking campaign events. They were
the first story that other people in the media could see.

But there are fewer and fewer afternoon papers in the country, and
CNN is on all day every day. The way the news cycle now works is
that you have an event in the morning, the reporters go up to their
hotel rooms and are working on their stories from one to two in the
afternoon, and they're looking at _Headline News. It's now becoming
an article of faith that television is more important than print, so the
first television coverage they see is CNN. If you want to find out
what's going on, it's the only game in town during the day. That has
an effect. A reposter says, "Well, look, this is what they took out it.
I might have taken something else, but I don't want to be wrong."

According to surveys, CNN does quite well in terms of credibility
factor. They don't have a lot of viewers but, hell, as long as you have
a hundred reporters looking at you and they are filing stories, you
don't need to have numbers to have influence. That influences us. I
would say I pay more attention to the CNN people covering us than
the amount of viewers would indicate. CNN's influence is definately
growing.

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