October Election Surprises
Jacques Steinberg and David Carr, The New York Times, 01 Nov. 2004
Every election season, a debate over a journalistic October surprise takes place. Four years ago, a television station in Portland, Me., reported five days before the presidential election that George W. Bush had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol back in 1976. In the California gubernatorial election last year, The Los Angeles Times published the accounts of 16 women who said that they had been sexually mistreated and humiliated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the first of the articles running five days before the vote.
Last Monday, The New York Times and CBS News reported that the Iraqi interim government had warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were missing from the Qaqaa munitions facility in Iraq.
In the ensuing uproar over the revelations, charges of journalistic impropriety and partisanship fly and many question whether the news media should report something so controversial so close to Election Day.
There are no firm rules guiding news organizations through these journalistic minefields. Some journalists have no compunction about printing or broadcasting controversial news about a political candidate in the last weeks of an election campaign. Others apply calculus to their deliberations, trying to determine the equation of topic, distance and fairness. Still others refuse to run any investigative articles in the week, or sometimes in the last two days, before the election.
''On the one hand, you're always weighing what the public needs to know before they vote,'' said Michael R. Beschloss, a presidential historian. ''On the other hand, are you putting a charge out so close to the election that those who are criticize do not have time to respond.''
Last week, after The Times and CBS reported on the missing munitions, the Republican National Committee research department sent an e-mail message to supporters and journalists attacking the report as flawed and charging a partisan bias. ''New York Times and Kerry campaign aren't ones to let facts get in way of good story,'' read one headline. And Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political strategist, said he thought the paper deliberately timed the report in an effort to hurt Mr. Bush's chances in the week before the election.
Jim Dyke, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he did not think that standards at this point in the campaign should be any different than the rest of the year. ''The concern that some people have had, as we approach this election, is that some publications have chosen to shade the facts in a way that leaves the reader with a misimpression or an inaccurate impression, and therefore does a disservice to those who look to those outlets for the facts, and does a disservice to the outlet as well,'' he said. Mr. Dyke declined to cite specific news organizations.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said the paper learned from CBS of a memorandum about the high explosives, sent from the Iraqi interim government to the International Atomic Energy Agency, early in the week of Oct. 18, and that its reporters reported through the week.
''The timing is really not much of an issue,'' Mr. Keller said. ''The story was ready to go and was published more than a week before Election Day. There was plenty of time for the candidates on both sides and their partisans to react, for additional information to come out.''
Had the article not been ready until a day or two before the election, Mr. Keller said, the decision to publish would have been more difficult. ''I can't say categorically you should not publish an article damaging to a candidate in the last days before an election,'' he said. ''If you learned a day or two before the election that a candidate had lied about some essential qualification for the job -- his health or criminal record -- and there's no real doubt and you've given the candidate a chance to respond and the response doesn't cast doubt on the story, do you publish it? Yes. Voters certainly have a right to know that.''
But he added, ''If you have it ready to go a week earlier and you hold it till two days before the election, then the ambush question kicks in.''
Jeff Fager, the executive producer of the Sunday edition of ''60 Minutes,'' said had his news program's segment on the missing munitions been ready, he would have broadcast it on Oct. 24, but not during last night's program. (The original plan was to report the development about the same time, but The New York Times was able to complete its article before ''60 Minutes'' finished its version. When the paper published its article on Oct. 25, a short version of the report was broadcast that night on the ''CBS Evening News,'' and a longer ''60 Minutes'' version was never completed.)
''Knowing what we know now about that story, we would not have felt comfortable running it two days before the election,'' Mr. Fager said. ''When you're talking about having 48 hours left, that doesn't seem to be appropriate to break a story that could have a significant impact on the election. There has to be time for each candidate to be able to respond.''
The Los Angeles Times found itself sharply criticized last year when it published the accounts of sexual mistreatment just days before the California gubernatorial election. Mr. Schwarzenegger criticized the report as ''trash politics.'' Representative David Dreier, a California Republican, accused the paper of partisanship. And the paper was inundated with angry letters and e-mail messages.
The paper staunchly defended its actions. As John S. Carroll, editor of The Los Angeles Times, wrote in an opinion piece last October, ''Better, I say, to be surprised by your newspaper in October than to learn in November that your newspaper has betrayed you by withholding the truth.''
Dean Baquet, the paper's managing editor, said the experience helped sharpen the thinking of the editors about how to deal with the timing of such sensitive articles. ''It's insulting to the reader to not put in the paper important information,'' he said, adding that ''It's a difficult time in a presidential election when you're in the middle of a war to not publish stories that will spark debate about the incumbent.''
But there are some exceptions, Mr. Baquet said. ''There's a certain kind of marginal kind of story about a candidate in a political race: your edgy piece of enterprise that is not really determined by time; the three-part series that examines a candidate's record in a negative light. You really shouldn't run that in the last days of a campaign.''
Just exactly how one determines the proper distance between article and Election Day is a matter of debate.
Every election season, a debate over a journalistic October surprise takes place. Four years ago, a television station in Portland, Me., reported five days before the presidential election that George W. Bush had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol back in 1976. In the California gubernatorial election last year, The Los Angeles Times published the accounts of 16 women who said that they had been sexually mistreated and humiliated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the first of the articles running five days before the vote.
Last Monday, The New York Times and CBS News reported that the Iraqi interim government had warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were missing from the Qaqaa munitions facility in Iraq.
In the ensuing uproar over the revelations, charges of journalistic impropriety and partisanship fly and many question whether the news media should report something so controversial so close to Election Day.
There are no firm rules guiding news organizations through these journalistic minefields. Some journalists have no compunction about printing or broadcasting controversial news about a political candidate in the last weeks of an election campaign. Others apply calculus to their deliberations, trying to determine the equation of topic, distance and fairness. Still others refuse to run any investigative articles in the week, or sometimes in the last two days, before the election.
''On the one hand, you're always weighing what the public needs to know before they vote,'' said Michael R. Beschloss, a presidential historian. ''On the other hand, are you putting a charge out so close to the election that those who are criticize do not have time to respond.''
Last week, after The Times and CBS reported on the missing munitions, the Republican National Committee research department sent an e-mail message to supporters and journalists attacking the report as flawed and charging a partisan bias. ''New York Times and Kerry campaign aren't ones to let facts get in way of good story,'' read one headline. And Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political strategist, said he thought the paper deliberately timed the report in an effort to hurt Mr. Bush's chances in the week before the election.
Jim Dyke, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he did not think that standards at this point in the campaign should be any different than the rest of the year. ''The concern that some people have had, as we approach this election, is that some publications have chosen to shade the facts in a way that leaves the reader with a misimpression or an inaccurate impression, and therefore does a disservice to those who look to those outlets for the facts, and does a disservice to the outlet as well,'' he said. Mr. Dyke declined to cite specific news organizations.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said the paper learned from CBS of a memorandum about the high explosives, sent from the Iraqi interim government to the International Atomic Energy Agency, early in the week of Oct. 18, and that its reporters reported through the week.
''The timing is really not much of an issue,'' Mr. Keller said. ''The story was ready to go and was published more than a week before Election Day. There was plenty of time for the candidates on both sides and their partisans to react, for additional information to come out.''
Had the article not been ready until a day or two before the election, Mr. Keller said, the decision to publish would have been more difficult. ''I can't say categorically you should not publish an article damaging to a candidate in the last days before an election,'' he said. ''If you learned a day or two before the election that a candidate had lied about some essential qualification for the job -- his health or criminal record -- and there's no real doubt and you've given the candidate a chance to respond and the response doesn't cast doubt on the story, do you publish it? Yes. Voters certainly have a right to know that.''
But he added, ''If you have it ready to go a week earlier and you hold it till two days before the election, then the ambush question kicks in.''
Jeff Fager, the executive producer of the Sunday edition of ''60 Minutes,'' said had his news program's segment on the missing munitions been ready, he would have broadcast it on Oct. 24, but not during last night's program. (The original plan was to report the development about the same time, but The New York Times was able to complete its article before ''60 Minutes'' finished its version. When the paper published its article on Oct. 25, a short version of the report was broadcast that night on the ''CBS Evening News,'' and a longer ''60 Minutes'' version was never completed.)
''Knowing what we know now about that story, we would not have felt comfortable running it two days before the election,'' Mr. Fager said. ''When you're talking about having 48 hours left, that doesn't seem to be appropriate to break a story that could have a significant impact on the election. There has to be time for each candidate to be able to respond.''
The Los Angeles Times found itself sharply criticized last year when it published the accounts of sexual mistreatment just days before the California gubernatorial election. Mr. Schwarzenegger criticized the report as ''trash politics.'' Representative David Dreier, a California Republican, accused the paper of partisanship. And the paper was inundated with angry letters and e-mail messages.
The paper staunchly defended its actions. As John S. Carroll, editor of The Los Angeles Times, wrote in an opinion piece last October, ''Better, I say, to be surprised by your newspaper in October than to learn in November that your newspaper has betrayed you by withholding the truth.''
Dean Baquet, the paper's managing editor, said the experience helped sharpen the thinking of the editors about how to deal with the timing of such sensitive articles. ''It's insulting to the reader to not put in the paper important information,'' he said, adding that ''It's a difficult time in a presidential election when you're in the middle of a war to not publish stories that will spark debate about the incumbent.''
But there are some exceptions, Mr. Baquet said. ''There's a certain kind of marginal kind of story about a candidate in a political race: your edgy piece of enterprise that is not really determined by time; the three-part series that examines a candidate's record in a negative light. You really shouldn't run that in the last days of a campaign.''
Just exactly how one determines the proper distance between article and Election Day is a matter of debate.