campaign 2004...misinformation and "black propaganda"

Littwin: News outlets regurgitate Kerry 'story'

February 17, 2004

This is a story about a story that it now seems isn't a story at all.

It's a story, in the words of Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, of "a frenzy about a story that hasn't been written concerning an allegation that hasn't been made."


It's a story of an unwritten story concerning an unmade allegation that somehow made the front page of the New York Daily News ("Stray? It Ain't So: Kerry") and the front page of The Times of London.

Yeah, you guessed it, it's a story about Matt Drudge. And if you're not feeling dirty yet, you will. Just read on.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have the Drudge Report bookmarked and you don't listen to Rush Limbaugh and you decided against taking the cheap winter flight to London.

For the most part, the mainstream American media ignored this story, which wasn't a story. But it was getting harder each day - particularly when John Kerry goes on Don Imus' radio show to deny it. Even the gossip-leery New York Times, although well inside the paper, and then only briefly, felt obligated to mention Kerry's denial of an affair. Yes, of an affair no one had ever alleged.

Once upon a time, there was the when-did- you-stop-beating-your-wife question. Now, the question is - and you have to follow this closely - when you started denying Drudge's claim that someone was working on a story about your alleged wife-beating that no one has actually alleged.

I bring it up now only because the injured party - who was named by Drudge, with a picture, and named by some London papers - has come forth to shoot the story down, saying the rumors were "completely false." She was in Kenya where her fiance lives and where "news" organizations had camped outside the fiancé's parents' home.

And now the Associated Press is using her name along with the denial. She becomes a footnote in a story that shouldn't have been a story, but distracts us from, says, reports of weapons of mass destruction that were erroneously reported.

There's nothing new about innuendo. But written innuendo, even on a Web site, somehow takes on greater weight than mere whispering.

Here's what apparently happened:

On the campaign trail, where rumors are as common as American Legion pancake breakfasts, there was talk of a story coming on Kerry. In an off-the-record comment, Wesley Clark, whose campaign was ending, told reporters he thought Kerry's campaign "would implode."

The rumor - with the off-the-record Clark quotes and stories of a woman who had "fled the country" - were then posted on Drudge, who cited several news organizations that were supposedly working on this story.

Drudge does have some credibility here because he was the first to report that Newsweek was working on the Monica Lewinsky story. He's often wrong. But he's often not wrong.

The Kerry report moved from Drudge to right-wing radio to the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal Web site to Rupert Murdoch's newspapers. And when the noise grew sufficiently loud, Kerry went on Imus in order to deny the rumor. And then came the reports of the denial. Clark, meanwhile, quickly endorsed Kerry, possibly hoping to keep his vice presidential prospects alive.

So, was there any truth to the story? I don't know. Neither does anyone who ran with it. Maybe the CU regents can appoint a panel to get to the bottom of it.

Of course, many who used the story used all the right caveats. And yet still ran with it. The London Times got the woman's age wrong, her job wrong, other details wrong. And still ran with it.

It was only coincidence - wink, wink - that the story that wasn't a story about an allegation that wasn't an allegation came out at the same time Bush was getting clobbered with questions about his service in the National Guard. And at the same time, Kerry, who is favored to win yet another primary today in Wisconsin, was leading Bush in some polls.

It's also the same time that an altered picture began making the Internet rounds, purporting to show Kerry speaking with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally.

And yet, unlike Hillary Clinton, I don't believe in a vast right-wing conspiracy.

You don't need a conspiracy. You just need to plant a story with Drudge and watch it work its way - like the Mydoom virus - through the media food chain. It's the ugly season, and, with many months before November, it will stay ugly for a while.

Not much damage was done this time. Unless, of course, you're the woman involved.

But I think you'll enjoy the latest news on this, which is, I guess, Drudge's way of saying he had a Web site malfunction. Check out Monday's Drudge headline: "Kerry Mystery Woman Dated Campaign Finance Chief." I can hardly wait to see who she's supposed to be dating next.



Mike Littwin's column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-5428 or e-mail him at

Campos: The scarlet sound bite

February 17, 2004

'Love," noted the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats, "is the crooked thing. There is nobody wise enough to know all that is in it."

As I write these words, the Irish press, along with its English, Australian and European counterparts, are having the time of their lives with reports that Sen. John Kerry may have had an affair a few years ago.


The foreign press has tracked down the young woman in question, and is featuring her photograph under banner headlines, while it aggressively pursues the story from several angles. Yet until the Associated Press published the woman's categorical denial that she has ever had an affair with Kerry or had ever worked for him, the mainstream American media had refused to touch the story.

The hypocrisy and bad faith that fuel this sort of story-within-a-story does not make for an edifying spectacle. First, the "story," such as it is, exists only because several eminently respectable media outlets have been investigating these rumors for quite some time now.

Such investigations, if they turn up anything at all, are guaranteed to come to the attention of the campaign operatives of the target's opponents, who will then use less fastidious media outlets to spread the story, even if, according to the standards of more respectable media actors, the story isn't the sort of thing that ought to run.

This appears to be precisely what happened in the matter at hand. The fact that the mainstream media had dug up possible evidence of marital infidelity on Kerry's part was fed to Matt Drudge's Internet Web site by Kerry's political enemies. As soon as Drudge posted the rumors on his Web site, the transformation of a sleazy rumor into a supposedly legitimate news story was inevitable.

Let's review the rationalizations for turning rumors of adultery on the part of presidential candidates into stories that ought to be investigated by respectable journalists:

• Having an affair demonstrates some nebulous trait known as "poor character." This charge of generic moral unfitness is too vague to take seriously. If the claim is that morally flawed persons are disqualified from the presidency, then it's obvious that no one is qualified to be president. The real question ought to be, is adultery the sort of moral failing that's relevant to evaluating a presidential candidate? And it should be equally obvious that, absent special circumstances (i.e., coercion or the like) the answer ought to be "no."

• Having an affair proves the candidate has poor judgment. The charge here is that the candidate has engaged in reckless behavior, and that, practically speaking, such recklessness is relevant to the candidate's fitness for office. This is an almost perfectly circular argument. It depends on the assumption that the behavior is newsworthy because it's reckless - but the assumption the behavior is reckless makes sense only if one first assumes it's newsworthy.

• Having an affair demonstrates hypocrisy on the part of candidates who present themselves as embodiments of bourgeois morality, aka "family values." This is laughable on its face. Adultery is an institution only a few weeks younger than marriage, and that in its own way embodies bourgeois values just as powerfully. (True sexual libertines can't undermine the sanctity of marriage, since they don't believe in it in the first place.)

That an adulterous politician is hypocritical about his behavior merely demonstrates that he actually believes in family values - or at least has the decency to pretend he does. The media ought to have the decency to pretend that they do, too - by honoring the fine bourgeois tradition of looking the other way.



Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

British Paper Defends Kerry Rumor Story

LONDON (AP) - A British newspaper on Tuesday defended the accuracy of its story quoting the father of Alexandra Polier, the woman who has been the subject of rumors linking her to Sen. John Kerry.

The unsubstantiated rumors arose on the Internet last week, saying that Polier, a 27-year-old freelance journalist, had an affair with the front-running Democratic presidential candidate. Both she and Kerry have denied the allegation.

On Friday, The Sun tabloid quoted Polier's father, Terry, as being harshly critical of Kerry.

In statements released to The Associated Press on Monday, Terry Polier said that he had been misquoted by the Sun and, in fact, would be voting for Kerry for president.

A spokeswoman for the Sun, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the paper stood by its story.

Alexandra Polier once worked for the AP as an editorial assistant in New York. She currently is in Kenya.

I take revel's point well. Nimh has posted some supposedly low-down-dirty tricks that Kerry pulled on Dean (not sure if it was true) and my first reaction was "yuck", my second reaction was "good." I think the Democratic candidate has to be willing to be ruthless, as ruthless as the opposition -- so I think it's gonna just be ugly. Hopefully amidst the ugliness the truth will out.

I do think, truly, that the only way out of the morass is for at least one party to maintain integrity. If guys like Frankin or Gary Trudeau or the dem candidate start playing Ann Coulter's game, then let's break out the booze, and have a ball, if that's all, there is.

Hmm, well what I mean is stuff that pretty much is Franken's game. I think he is fairly careful with his facts, but he uses a lot of bombast, a lot of rhetorical flourishes. He's not an academic. He panders.

"Integrity" is too subjective, here.

revel

I think Bush's past (contribution and dedication, voting record, etc) is fair game, as is Kerry's. But relevant issues, not whether or not Bush ever humped someone else while married.

So, I'm looking to document here, as the election progresses, instances where a campaign will use not relevant facts, but will stoop to creating or forwarding innuendo and character assassination using known lies and half truths.

The contestants and their political parties will push to the limits that society will tolerate to gain the victory. Such is the nature of the lust for power.

My reference to Franken was not clear. What I was getting at was more that the definition of "high road" is rather subjective. I doubt that McGentrix or Fedral would say that Franken takes the high road. He panders, he hyperbolizes... etc.

I just think that a certain Dukakis-ian Mondale-ian and even Gore-ian "I am a man of integrity, I would do nothing untoward, trust me" thing doesn't work.

The only unanswered question about the politically inspired lie that Sen. John Kerry had had an affair with an "intern" was which interested source planted it with the eager Internet right-wing hooligan Matt Drudge and with conservative British newspapers that put it into wide public play. Its timing was fortuitous. Immediately after George W. Bush went into a tailspin, falling behind Democratic presidential front-runner Kerry in the polls, Kerry became the subject of smears filled with remembrance of things past. First, a phony composite photograph was circulated of Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda at an anti-Vietnam War rally. "Thou hast committed fornication." Unfortunately, not only did Fonda denounce the ploy as a "dirty trick," but so did Republican Sen. John McCain, heroic Vietnam prisoner of war, Bush's rival for the nomination in 2000 and a close friend of Kerry's. "But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead." The attempt to revive the dread of the Nixon era failed, the scarlet letter of the Clinton years was unfurled. Thus another wench was promptly surfaced.