NOTHING illuminates reality quite like bad movies. In the Cold War classic "War Games," a young Matthew Broderick accidentally hacks into the U.S. military's system to play a computer game. The game nearly starts a nuclear war until it finally learns that no one really wins such a war. Mutually assured destruction, the computer realized, is a bad thing. It seems the editors of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have yet to figure that out.
The Times has declared war on Rudy Giuliani. The visceral hatred their editors harbor for the man is well-known to anyone who lived in New York during his tenure has mayor, but it's only now attracting national attention. The Times feels it has aGod-given duty to inform the country about Rudy's failings as mayor. It's even making stories out of nothing, like "Some Balk at Giuliani Role 9/11 Ceremony." If you spout an anti-Giuliani message and have a title, rest assured the New York Times will quote you.
The Times has even taken to nitpicking at Giuliani campaign pledges. In a story last week, they inked two columns attacking Giuliani's claims to be a fiscal conservative. They managed to simultaneously accuse him of being anti-union and too soft during union contract negotiations. A few days earlier they ran "Opponent's Attack Giuliani's New York Record," which was little more than a list of ways he wasn't conservative enough on guns and immigration. Then two weeks ago, in a desperate bid for dirt, the Times ran a story about how Giuliani wasn't rural enough for Iowa -- a brilliant observation considering he was mayor of New York City.
While the Times was busy grinding its axe against Rudy, the Wall Street Journal was throwing cheap shots at Hillary Clinton. A few weeks ago the Journal ran a lead editorial bemoaning that Hillary converted all her assets to cash, Her rationale was to remove any financial conflicts of interest. But the Journal's editors complained this meant she no longer had a stake in the U.S. economy. Aside from being possibly the stupidest criticism I've ever heard, I'm certain if Hillary had not put her money in cash, then they would've criticized her for not avoiding financial conflicts of interests. But over the past week the Journal has really ratcheted it up a notch.
In a series of four articles Tuesday through Friday, the Journal detailed the fundraising activities of Norman Hsu. Hsu was a "Hilraiser" - he pledged to raise at least $100,000 for the Clinton campaign.. In a front page article they tracked suspicious patterns in campaign donations, prompting an Federal Election Commission investigation and, on Friday, Hsu's indictment. Unlike some of the Times' articles this was certainly newsworthy, but was it really front-page material for America's premier financial newspaper? Furthermore, criticism of other top candidates' fundraising has been conspicuously missing from the Journal. By devoting itself to attacking Hillary Clinton, just as the Times is shamelessly slamming Giuliani, the Journal is practicing bad journalism.
There are two main reasons why papers' picking sides (in their News sections) hurts American democracy: disenfranchisement and the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. The combination of partisan papers and earlier primaries is effectively stripping primary voters of their ability to choose. Voters only see articles bashing a particular candidate, Giuliani or Hillary. Furthermore, given that the primaries are so early and close together, voters have no opportunity to see a bandwagon effect among other candidates. In these papers' views, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney shouldn't bother showing up.
In reality, though, Clinton and Giuliani are not shoe-ins for the nominations. Given her refusal to apologize for her Iraq War vote and her husband's support for free trade, Hillary is not well-liked among leftist Democrats. A coterie of evil businessmen consorting under the shade of the buttonwood tree writing angry articles in the Journal might be the best thing to happen to her. Similarly, Giuliani's views on abortion, gun control and immigration have landed him in hot water with the far-right GOP faithful. Being the Times' number one enemy just might bring him into the fold. By demonizing their least favorite candidates, the Times and Journal just might make their worst nightmares come true.
The computer in War Games was on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviets until it played tic-tac-toe. No matter who goes first, the game always ends in a draw. The best strategy, it realized, was simply not to play. Instead of slavishly attacking a single candidate, mainstream media should try nonpartisan, objective journalism. It looks like anyone who has played tic-tac-toe is smarter than the editors of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Josh Levy's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jlevy@cavalierdaily.com.
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