Kucinich vs. Dean in the Media

[redqueen]

Once again, for any that missed it:

http://www.politicsus.com/presidential%20press%20releases/Kucinich/102903.htm

When Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) entered the race for the Democratic nomination, his supporters had every reason to expect their candidate to be taken seriously by the press. Already acknowledged as the "leader of the opposition"1 to Bush's Iraq war resolution in Congress, with a 100% rating from the AFL-CIO and a record of beating Republican incumbents in a bellwether Midwestern state, Kucinich, the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, had obvious appeal to angry, progressive, antiwar Democratic primary voters in battleground races like Iowa and New Hampshire.

But if Kucinich supporters were hoping for serious coverage, they were in for a serious disappointment. Too many campaign reporters decided that their job was to act as gatekeeper of the "top tier" instead of informing their readers about the field. Just two weeks after Kucinich threw his hat into the ring, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney was already explaining why the Ohio Democrat didn't deserve as much attention as others. Warning of the "potential for complication" in having too many candidates running, Nagourney wrote: "Ideally, a sponsor interested in organizing a meaningful debate would like to limit it to, say, the six top-tier candidates. But who decides what top tier means?" To answer his own question, he supplied a soundbite from an academic pundit: "With all due respect, Kucinich and Moseley Braun have no chance of getting the nomination."2

Over the next three months (March-May), Nagourney's stories mentioned Kucinich only 13 times. Howard Dean was mentioned 111 times. Yet during those months, polls of registered Democrats showed the two candidates running so close that their levels of support were within the margin of error.3

As the chart above shows, network TV news coverage was no better or fairer. Soon after Bush declared "major combat" over in Iraq, Dean saw a surge in TV coverage, with 30 mentions on the three major nightly newscasts in May alone. Kucinich wasn't mentioned at all that month. Yet the April 23 Gallup poll had Dean at 5% and Kucinich at 3%. From then on, the coverage only got more unbalanced.

Riding a wave of heavy summer media coverage, Dean grew in the polls, while the Kucinich campaign scrambled to make the Washington press corps take notice. From June to August, Dean garnered 90 mentions on the evening news, while Kucinich received a total of 2. By the summer's end, Time magazine had discovered "The Dean Factor"—while Joe Klein, its political columnist, labeled Kucinich a "vanity" candidate. (To be distinguished, Klein claimed, from "serious candidates who have yet to catch fire," like Lieberman and Edwards.)

Why have so many journalists taken it upon themselves to decide for their readers which candidates are electable and which aren't? On the road with the Dean campaign, Nation reporter Matt Taibbi posed that very question to the candidate's press contingent:4

"When I asked the reporters on the plane what the value of this kind of reporting was, I got an interesting answer. No fewer than four journalists replied to the effect that unless the electability issue was addressed, 'someone like Kucinich' might get the nomination.

"'Hell, if it came down to a battle of position papers, Dennis Kucinich might win,' laughed Jackson Baker of the Memphis Flyer, incidentally not a horse-racer and one of the true good guys on the plane.

"'I think its value is that it helps to explain to the reader why I'm spending so much time with one candidate,' said Mark Silva of the Orlando Sentinel. 'He needs to know why I'm reporting so much on Howard Dean, as opposed to, say, Dennis Kucinich.'"

[JohnKleeb]

1. This is interesting to say the least

:shrug: I really am confused. Just wow simply. I dont mean to sound like I am complaining but something doesnt smell right. I just hope even if he doesnt get the nod, whoever the nominee is and wins would consider him for a cabinet post, he really has some stellar views. The ratio I am seeing of Dean being mentioned to Kucinich is jawdropping honestly. I am not bickering but this does seem to be very interesting to me at least.

[Larkspur]

2. How come Kucinich didn't pursue the SEIU endorsement like Dean did?

If Kucinich has a strong labor record, why didn't he do the legwork to win SEIU's endorsement?

Dean did it by following the plan that the President of SEIU gave to all Dem Prez candidates. Only Dean followed through on it. What was Kucinich doing?

Could it be that the reason the media doesn't cover Kucinich as well as Dean, be that Kucinich isn't doing anything to attract it?

Dean started off, like Kucinich, as an asterick in the field against the Establishment Dems, and with hard work, good strategy, calculated risks, innovation, and luck, which is when opportunity meets hard work, Dean is the current front runner.

I find it ironic that a "blue blood" like Howard Dean, knows how to work more effectively courting labor support than Kucinich, who touts himself a friend of the workers.

[redqueen]

3. Do you know that he didn't?

Could you provide some reference to this plan you mention? I'm curious now.

Also, I'd read a few different times that the number one issue with the labor union leadership was 'electability'. Yes, we've been sold down the NAFTA / WTO / FTAA river by union bosses because Adam Nagorney and his fellow media whores have sold them on the electability meme.

Thanks, nimrods!

Anyway... Larkspur... I'd really appreciate some more info on that plan, if you could, please. Thanks. :)

[w4rma]

5. According to their president, Dean was the only one to tried to (n/t)

[redqueen]

7. Yeah, but could we please get a link or something? n/t

[Larkspur]

8. You want a link, here it is

from Time Magazine

Over the past year, whenever one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates made his way to the downtown Washington office of Andrew Stern, head of the nation's largest union, he came away with two things: a bit of advice and the names of local officials across the country. "I'm the voice of 1.6 million members," the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) told those who sought his endorsement. "Go talk to them." Only one candidate, Stern says, took him up on it. Howard Dean not only talked to SEIU members, he showed up on their picket line at Yale University, cheered their organizers at a San Francisco hospital and consulted the union's nurses in Iowa as he put together his proposal for solving the shortage in their profession. "Howard Dean didn't start on top," Stern says, "but he certainly ended up on top."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031124-543791,00.html

[DemBones DemBones]

12. Dennis Kucinich has walked so many picket lines and supports

unions so strongly that I wonder if he really ignored this union. I also wonder if Richard Gephardt ignored this union, since he's always been a strong union supporter as well.

I know what the article in Time said, had read it before, but it's very strange that only one out of eight candidates would actively court this large union, particularly when two other candidates have always been strong union advocates. I have to wonder if there's more to the story than that.

[Larkspur]

13. Gephardt's union strength is with industrial unions

which are dying. SEIU is a service workers union and the up and coming kind.

The quote Time printed was from President Andrew Sterm of SEIU and Stern was not supportive of Dean at first because Dean was an asterick in the polls at the time of the initial meeting, but Dean proved himself to the SEIU membership, which voted overwhelmingly for him.

I think Kucinich's campaign is like Braun's -- show up at the debates but the campaigning is poor. I think that Dean, by merit, is the superior campaigner to the entire Dem field. Dean has earned his support and endorsements via sheer effort and smart strategizing. He has street smarts combined with a forward thinking and hopeful vision rooted in our American Revolutionary past. That is why I believe that Dean will topple Bush in 2004 because Bush, the lazy campaigner, will underestimate Dean.

[cryofan]

4. Just like always, the media is the gatekeeper to the Presidency

This quote from above about says it all:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Why have so many journalists taken it upon themselves to decide for their readers which candidates are electable and which aren't? On the road with the Dean campaign, Nation reporter Matt Taibbi posed that very question to the candidate's press contingent:4

"When I asked the reporters on the plane what the value of this kind of reporting was, I got an interesting answer. No fewer than four journalists replied to the effect that unless the electability issue was addressed, 'someone like Kucinich' might get the nomination.

"'Hell, if it came down to a battle of position papers, Dennis Kucinich might win,' laughed Jackson Baker of the Memphis Flyer, incidentally not a horse-racer and one of the true good guys on the plane.

"'I think its value is that it helps to explain to the reader why I'm spending so much time with one candidate,' said Mark Silva of the Orlando Sentinel. 'He needs to know why I'm reporting so much on Howard Dean, as opposed to, say, Dennis Kucinich.'"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And these slimy media b*stards have the b*lls to say they are fair and balanced? None of the mainstream newspapers are balanced.

At least this time around, what with the widespread use of computers, and online news, progressive researchers will be able to show exactly how the media chose the top tier of candidates. But what good will do? The only people who will read will be the media and us activists. The sheeple never read that kind of stuff.....

I am seriously thinking of moving to Europe....can we ever change this system?

[cryofan]

6. The question is, are "news stories" news, or are they paid advertisements?

Are some news stories that are in the papers and on TV actually paid advertisements? As you see from the graph, Dean's poll numbers lag and follow his news coverage. The news coverage of Dean is caused his poll numbers to go up. But we all know that Dean had money to begin with. Did some of that money go to paying for the "news" coverage?

[blm]

11. Paid for by the corporate media for the election of Bush in 2004.

.

[Duder]

9. Kucinich vs. Braun in the Media

Dennis got more media coverage than the only African American woman running for President, even though Carol polled higher.

(The number of times the candidates' names came up in a Nexis database search, March 14-Sept. 14, 2003)

The New York Times

Dennis Kucinich: 54
Carol Moseley Braun: 33

Washington Post

Kucinich: 111
Moseley Braun: 66

USA Today

Kucinich: 38
Moseley Braun: 28

ABC News Poll
Sept. 10-13, 2003

Carol Moseley Braun: 4
Dennis Kucinich: 2

FOX News Poll
Sept. 9-10, 2003

Moseley Braun: 3
Kucinich: 2

USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll
Aug. 25-26, 2003

Moseley Braun: 5
Kucinich: 1

[Padraig18]

10. Oh. no!

DK is hogging up all of CMB's media attention. He must be their chosen one! /sarcasm off

[helleborient]

14. Another possible reason for the difference in media coverage....

A significant difference in experience of campaign managers...

This is the bio I found online for Dot Maver, Dennis Kucinich's campaign manager:

"Dot Maver is an educator with a background in health, physical education, philosophy and psychology. A teacher at both the high school and university levels, she has also worked extensively with youth/adult partnership models in community development. As Dr. Dot she presents a revolutionary fast pitch softball hitting technique: The Maver Method. Dot also works with ADD/ADHD children using an innovative technique: Transformational Kinesiology."

Some bits on Howard Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi:

Trippi was an organizer for the presidential campaigns of Edward M. Kennedy in 1980 and the Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and was deputy political director for Gary Hart when his ship sank in the spring of 1987. Later that year, he signed up with Richard A. Gephardt's presidential campaign.

Trippi is more than a one-person operation. The deputy campaign manager, Bob Rogan, a former chief of staff to Dean, helps keep the operation running, and a staff that once was one of the smallest of all the Democratic campaigns is among the largest. The most difficult challenge, Trippi said, is to break the habits he has learned from the old economy of politics.

"Everything I was ever taught in a presidential campaign was you have a top-down hierarchy, a military command and control," he said. "You do that and you suffocate this thing. We wouldn't grow one person. I know that I have to let go and the risks associated with doing that, and I have a hard time letting go of the steering wheel."



It's impossible to discount the value of a strong campaign organization...they, after all, are responsible for contacting the media and gaining the coverage.

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. What I see here

may not be just a question of having experience at running a campaign, but the question of being a known quantity. Very hard for an outsider to break into the political and news media circles.

Also, I think we are facing the inevitable problem of bias in the "reporting". To report something is to disclose all of the facts regardless of your own feelings on the subject. Most of the people "reporting" on politics in the news media are "experts" and therefore offering their own opinions on whatever choice tidbits of facts they opt to include.

Basically, this is no different than what Rush Limbaugh does, just that the language used is less offensive, and the scope of what is politically "acceptable" is marginally wider.

[LuminousX]

16. Kucinich's campaign manager isn't even a media savvy person?

This could be why Kucinich is turning down offers to appear on national news shows.