An astonishingly bad piece in the New York Times yesterday on marriage and the proposed constitutional amendment. At its heart was the following assertion:
President Bush had been noncommittal about a constitutional amendment immediately after the Massachusetts ruling, with the administration worried that support for a ban on gay marriage would alienate moderate voters. But last week Mr. Bush for the first time voiced his support, saying, “I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that.” The statement signals the White House’s increasing confidence that it can exploit the matter in the presidential campaign, both to energize its evangelical supporters and to discredit the eventual Democratic nominee.
One small problem: the president did not say that. He said: “If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment…” In the context of religious right demands for immediate support for the FMA, that’s a big difference. He also went on to support states’ rights in the matter of codifying relationships. That isn’t just my spin; anti-gay marriage conservatives voiced disappointment with the president’s statement. Even the gay press focused on Bush’s deliberate ambiguity, putting the critical words “if necessary” in the headlines. To ignore all that context and then to lop off two critical words from a presidential sentence is to commit what amounts to a lie about Bush’s position. Why?
THE NYT COCOON: A good question. If you reported the actual quote, you’d have to explain Bush’s nuanced and obfuscatory position. If you did that, you couldn’t run a simple Bush-is-evil-and-the-hicks-out-there-are-all-bigots story. You couldn’t claim that the White House was exploiting this issue (with no evidence and not even a blind quote to back it up). But this anti-Bush line is more important to the NYT than the truth. That’s why seven out of ten quotes are anti-marriage equality; and the piece doesn’t mention the enormous age polarization – with the young favoring marriage equality and seniors being horrified by it. That’s also why Elder and Seelye can describe 55 percent support for an amendment as “strong.” Huh? It’s worth recalling that the flag-burning amendment was supported by around 80 percent of the public, and the balanced budget amendment by around 85 percent – and yet both failed. Isn’t 55 percent support therefore actually weak for an amendment to the Constitution? Isn’t the fact that a third of Republicans oppose the amendment significant? What’s almost funny about the piece is that it takes five paragraphs until we get to the 55 percent number. And the language gets weaker as it goes along. Support goes from “strong” in the headline to “widespread” later and then the data shows that in the Northeast and West, the amendment barely makes the 50 percent mark or slips below it. Strong? Dan Drezner isn’t the only one who takes exception. I know it’s Christmas, and editors are away or hung-over from the office party. But this degree of shoddy journalism is inexcusable. It’s a good test for the new ombudsman. Email Dan Okrent at public@nytimes.com and demand a correction but more importantly an explanation for the doctored quote. Someone somewhere at the Times looked at the original statement and consciously truncated it to alter its meaning – in the lead story on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. Then they spun and distorted the rest of the piece to fit. Who will be held accountable?
The Dish 