"Gotcha Journalism" is a Cancer

"Gotcha Journalism" is a Cancer
By Jerry Lobdill , Jan 29, 2004

Gotcha Journalism is a cancer that threatens to undermine and destroy our democratic republic today, and increasingly so in this presidential election season. While the Star-Telegram usually does a very good job of being balanced, we have noticed that gotcha journalism is creeping into your paper as the campaign heats up. The current example we cite is the article by Adam Nagourney and Jodi Wilgoren.

"Dean falters in final days before caucuses in Iowa" that ran in on page 3A of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on January 13, 2004. Mr. Nagourney who writes for the New York Times is consistently emotional and highly opinionate. His articles should appear on the Op-Ed page rather than being offered as news from the campaigns.

This nation was founded on the assumption that voters would be well informed and be told the facts by the free press. It was recognized that this assumption must hold true or the nation would not survive. We still recognize that fact today. But the press has changed into a show with sensationalism being the prominent feature of stories and frequently requiring elaborate fabrications based on distorted or cherry-picked quotes designed to increase audience titillation.

The "he said-she said" format of much reporting today with quotes that distort the underlying facts and implications that allegations behind the quotes are high priority and require a defense, is one of the major modes of this gotcha journalism. The gross dishonesty of this practice and other similar modes of "news" today depart drastically from the moral integrity required for the survival of a democratic republic.

Worse yet is the new tendency of "news" sources to quote the distorted stories published by other gotcha journalism mongers in the trade. This magnifies the problem enormously. To illustrate how the Star-Telegram can improve the reliability and integrity of its stories we'll discuss the Nagourney piece. This piece ran in the NY Times under the headline, "Surges by Rivals Put Dean on the Defensive in Iowa", yet your headline gave even a more negative spin which was not at all supported by the article.

Emotionally loaded words are clues that a piece is not suited to run as campaign news. Here are some examples of the emotionally loaded wording in this article, each time to the detriment of Governor Dean: "has slipped into turbulent territory... Dr. Dean's supporters expressed distress... faltering performance... again on the defensive...latest in a series of difficulties Dr. Dean has encountered... could dash his hopes... dropped all pretense of comity... abandoning his pledge to avoid attacks on opponents... in full fighter mode... difficult period... appears to be taking a toll... He seemed tired and rattled... He looked like a deer caught in the headlights."

None of these descriptions fits the facts to be found in the actual transcripts available on the internet from the original events, and many of the phrases are opinions (or prejudices) that have no place in a news story. The sidebar of your article states: "Slips in Iowa and a surge by retired General Wesley Clark in New Hampshire have Howard Dean on the defensive." This is grossly inaccurate. Your language here perpetuates an inaccurate label that the Bush campaign and other Democratic candidates have tried to paste on Dean - that he is gaffe-prone.

In every case we have investigated where this label has been invoked the evidence of gaffe-proneness was not there in the transcript or the video/audio. You might consider adopting the following rules when doing news stories on candidates. Do not promulgate "portrayals" of other candidates by partisan writers with a known agenda.

Give your readers the true facts without cherry-picking quotes out of context. Portrayals of Dean that we know to be unsupported by a preponderance of facts are "gaffe-prone", "angry", "left-leaning", "unelectable", "faltering", and "flip-flopping". As November approaches you will see Karl Rove attempting to "portray" the Democratic nominee by pasting such labels.

These labels will be repeated endlessly by the Rove propaganda machine and gotcha journalists until they are generally accepted even by normally ethical news sources. If you want to guard your integrity you need to be alert for such false information. Thank you for your time and your efforts to keep your coverage fair and ethical.

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