It’s the news, stoopid: In Asia Times, Tom Engelhardt parses the disintegration of the Bush administration in recent weeks and finds the tide has turned — big time. While the entire article is worth a read for its insights, Engehardt’s assessment of the headlines of the day is really telling:
If you want to wet an index finger yourself and hoist it airwards to see which way the winds are blowing, then just check out how the media has been framing in headlines the recent spate of administration attacks. Headline writing is a curious in-house craft – and well worth following. Changing headline language is a good signal that something’s up. When the president attacks, it’s now commonly said that he’s “lashing out” – an image of emotional disarray distinctly at odds with the once-powerful sense of the Bush administration as the most disciplined White House on record and of the president and vice president as resolutely unflappable. Here’s just a small sampling:
The Miami Herald, “President lashes out at critics of Iraq war”; the Associated Press, Cheney latest to lash out at critics; the Buffalo News, Bush lashes out at war critics; even the Voice of America, Bush lashes out at political opponents over Iraq accusations.
In other headlines last week, the administration was presented in post-Oz style as beleaguered, under siege and powerless to control its own fate: The Associated Press, for example, headlined a recent Jennifer Loven piece, Iraq war criticism stalks Bush overseas; the New York Times, a David Sanger report, Iraq dogs president as he crosses Asia to promote trade; and CNN headlined the Murtha events, A hawk rattles GOP’s cage.
The language used in such recent media accounts was no less revealing. Sanger, for example, began his piece this way:
“President Bush may have come to Asia determined to show leaders here that his agenda is far broader than Iraq and terrorism, but at every stop, and every day, Mr Bush and his aides have been fighting a rearguard action to justify how the United States got into Iraq and how to get out.”
While Loven launched hers with, “His war policies under siege at home …”, attributing the siege atmosphere and the Bush “counterattack” to “the president’s newly aggressive war critics”.
Lashing out, stalked, dogged, under siege, counterattacking, fighting a rearguard action – let’s not just attribute this to “newly aggressive war critics”. It’s a long-coming shift in the zeitgeist, as evident in the media as in the halls of Congress.
What was left out (although it might be in the larger article) is that headlines are written by editors, not reporters. This is an old custom in newspapers that goes back to the days when papers were literally pasted up — stuck onto dummies with waxy paste — and the space for the headlines was determined last, after all the copy was fit in. It’s still that way today, only the papers are of course laid out on computer. The point is, you can figure out what the EDITORS are taking from the story by reading the headline. Sometimes they miss the point, sometimes they make other ones that aren’t obvious in the text.
The point here was not who writes the headlines, but the similarity in language between heads at different publications. It’s the words, man!
Tom Engelhardt has been a steadfast and honest “speaker of the truth” for many years. His TOMDISPATCH should be required reading for everyone in MSM and the US Government…and most particularly by the Democrat “leadership”—the Clintons, Biden, Kerry, Edwards, and yes, Dr Dean as well.
Old School Republicans can find reason in his work: neocons probably lack the mental acuity to understand him, but anyone who loves the REPUBLIC and is willing to think will always find reason in his work.