The press and the President

I found this CJR article about the Texas press' relationship with President Bush awhile back, via Amblongus and Easter Lemming. It's the end of the piece that interests me the most, where some of the editorial board members are asked about their endorsement plans for this fall.

In 2000 all of the state’s major newspapers endorsed George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore. Despite that fact, Rich Oppel Sr., the editor of the Austin American-Statesman, told CJR that “there’s no guarantee that Bush will get our endorsement again.” In particular, Oppel said, the editorial board at his paper “will look very hard” at Bush’s fiscal policies.

While it’s far too early to predict what the major papers will do, The Dallas Morning News will probably back him again. “It’s safe to say that we’ll start out favoring the former governor of Texas,” said [Keven Ann Willey, vice president and editorial page editor at the Morning News]. It appears that he’ll also get the vote of Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, who concluded his February story on Bush by writing, “If I end up voting for him — and I probably will — it will really be Governor Bush who gets my vote.”

Governor Bush or President Bush, the president will always be a Texan. And come endorsement time, that fact will likely outweigh all other considerations. As Bob Rivard, the editor of the San Antonio Express-News, told CJR, “I’d bet my salary against a Starbucks that we endorse Bush.”

This was, of course, all written before anyone here had heard of Abu Ghraib. Will any of them hold Bush accountable for that? Will any of them hold Bush accountable for not holding anyone else accountable, such as our most superb ever Secretary of Defense? If I had five minutes alone in a room with Paul Burka, the first thing I'd do is ask him what he thought Governor Bush would have done about Abu Ghraib. If I had six uninterrupted hours and access to Lexis-Nexis, I'd do a little research to see how many times the editorial boards of Texas' major dailies called for a member of the Clinton cabinet to resign or be fired and for what reasons. (David Neiwert examines one such case.) What more do they need to start making the same noises here?

You and I, of course, don't need to depend on these stalwarts of public morality to express our opinions about responsibility and accountability. But it sure would be interesting to do a little followup on that article now, wouldn't it?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on May 16, 2004 to The making of the President | TrackBack