Posted by Dan Ewert : 4/23/2002 11:56:00 PM (Archive Link)
I read an article in my paper today that concerned Al Gore’s criticism of Bush’s environmental policy. What I find interesting is why we’re so concerned about what Al Gore thinks… more to the point, why is the media so interested? The criticisms noted in the article were made by Gore during a speech to a whopping 200 students at Vanderbilt University. This wasn’t a major policy dinner or a large public speech. This was a small gathering of people. However, it’s obvious that the news media had people there writing down every word so that they may appear in a nice nationally syndicated Associated Press article. It seems to me that the media is giving Gore a great deal of coverage lately. He says something about government and they jump on it. He says something negative about Bush and they start drooling. My guess is that they’re looking to quote just about anybody of import that so boldly criticizes Bush and Gore has been doing plenty of that lately. He’s been willing to knock just about every presidential policy except for those that concern the war on terror… and it’s probably only a matter of time before those begin. So do I think there’s some media bias towards Gore? Yes… they’re looking for an anti-Bush new angle.

There was a also a more subtle part of the article that I felt was anti-Bush. It reads as follows, “Along his brief New York nature hike, Bush walked a wooded trail and stopped along the way to help fix it up. At one point he drove a large nail through a log with the back of an ax, the sharp end coming within a few inches of his forehead with every thrust. Bush’s face reddened and he gave a deep sigh as he finished the project.” First of all, why is this even here? It has little to do with main point of the piece and is utterly out of place. I’ve noticed a similar tendency with other articles in that they’ll end with a paragraph or two that don’t fit in with the rest of the writing. This is one of those instances. I noted another example in a previous post in which the writer added a few sentences showing what a swell guy Al Gore is because of his dog troubles. Everything in the article prior to this was about Gore’s daughter running for office. My opinion is that these unrelated endings are a chance for the author to include a little bit of opinion and to leave the reader with that last image. In the Bush case noted here, the image is that of an clumsy idiot who’s flinging an axe around by his face and got exhausted after driving one nail. Of course, there’s nothing clumsy or irresponsible about it. If you’re pounding a nail with the back of an axe, the blade is going to come near your face. You don’t use an axe like a tack hammer. That’s not the point, however. The point is that this bit of information didn’t belong here in the first place and I’m going to be on the lookout for similar violations of good news writing in the future.