Reply #3: "Typecasting Candidates" by E.R. Shipp [View All]

[Mabus]

This is a topic that Gore knows well and I'm glad to see him speaking out about it. As proof, here's a snippet from The Daily Howler concerning the role of the media in casting and perpetuating roles for each presidential candidate. It's bad enough that this shit happens in advertising but when the media does and it affects election turnouts it is abominable.

But E. R. Shipp—then the Washington Post’s ombudsman—described the process very neatly on March 5, 2000. Her column—headlined, “Typecasting Candidates”—was a brilliant study of the way the Post was scripting Campaign 2000. In the following passage, Shipp described the unprofessional way the Post was covering the four major hopefuls—Gore, Bradley, Bush and McCain:

SHIPP (3/5/00): But The Post has gone beyond that kind of <“horse race”> reporting in favor of articles that try to offer context—and even conjecture—about the candidates' motives in seeking the office of president. And readers react—sometimes in a nonpartisan way, more often not—to roles that The Post seems to have assigned to the actors in this unfolding political drama. Gore is the guy in search of an identity; Bradley is the Zen-like intellectual in search of a political strategy; McCain is the war hero who speaks off the cuff and is, thus, a "maverick"; and Bush is a lightweight with a famous name, and has the blessings of the party establishment and lots of money in his war chest. As a result of this approach, some candidates are whipping boys; others seem to get a free pass.

In Shipp’s formulation, the Post wasn’t really reporting this race. The Post was doing something else; in effect, it was assigning “roles” to various “actors” in an ongoing “drama.” Shipp went on to criticize the work of Ceci Connolly, whose reporting was clearly turning Gore into a Washington Post “whipping boy.” And she described the way the Post was giving McCain that “free pass:”

SHIPP: What didn't fit the role assigned to McCain, apparently, was his frequent use of a word deemed derogatory by Asian Americans: "gook." To his credit, Howard Kurtz mentioned this usage in a December article about "the sweetly seductive relationship between the senator and the press"—one in which McCain "smothers journalists with access and they produce colorful copy." Not until last month did McCain's use of the G-word become an issue for those apparently "seduced" campaign reporters and other journalists.

According to Shipp, McCain was involved in a “sweetly seductive” relationship with the Post’s reporters. And since McCain had been assigned a favorable role in the newspaper’s unfolding drama, the Post was disappearing his blunders, Shipp wrote. (Much more on that in our upcoming series.) Meanwhile, in what specific role had McCain been cast? What was the nature of his “typecasting?” McCain had been cast as a “maverick,” Shipp wrote. Last night—six years later!—O’Donnell typecast this drama once again. http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh062206.shtml