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Media Matters
Dec. 20, 2002
Lott Controversy Makes Some Reporters Pause -- Except One
By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
Ombudsman
National Public Radio
When Sen. Trent Lott uttered his now-infamous statement of support for Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign, not many journalists noticed. Some even thought it wasn't worth reporting. What happened to aggressive journalism?
This is one of those occasional moments of journalistic self-flagellation over missed, or almost missed, stories. It took several days before the story was widely reported. Now some journalists are asking if there was undue reticence about reporting the story. And some listeners ask if NPR felt intimidated about reporting this story for fear of being accused of a "liberal bias."
But not in this case. In fact, NPR broke this story.
Here is what happened:
Thursday, Dec. 5
NPR's David Welna had just finished a profile of Sen. Thurmond's career for All Things Considered. It ran on Thursday, Dec. 5... the same day as Sen. Thurmond's good-bye party complete with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and Sen. Lott's memorable phrase: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Welna was still in his office on the third floor of the U.S. Capitol, watching the proceedings on C-SPAN and waiting until his report finished airing on
All Things Considered.
"I was astonished when I heard Sen. Lott utter those words... I had been researching and listening to a lot of archival tape of the Dixiecrat movement, so my ears, I suppose, were attuned to some of the code phrases from that era... I knew there was a story there."
Welna had a report on the NPR newscast that aired at 7pm ET.
But after that, the story disappeared from NPR for the next few days.
Friday, Dec. 6
NPR wasn't alone in not following through. ABC News mentioned it Friday morning on its overnight television service and posted the quote on its Web site. But no further stories appeared on ABC for another few days.
To its credit, PBS' Washington Week in Review with Gwen Ifill ran the Lott statement on its program that night.
Saturday, Dec. 7
The Washington Post's Tom Edsall writes a short mention of it for the Saturday paper. According to Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, Edsall resisted putting it the paper's political column. Some in the Washington media worried that doing more with Lott's statement might be construed as "prosecutorial zeal" on the part of the media.
"After all," says one editor, "it seemed to many of us like a gaffe that politicians make all the time."
But one small article in The Washington Post seemed to be the tipping point.
Sunday, Dec. 8
The Sunday television talk shows start to ask questions. NBC's Meet The Press and CNN's Late Edition mention it in their round-table debates. Curiously, the CBS Evening News reports it, but CBS' Face The Nation does not. NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday always begins its program with a segment called "Voices in the News." But that week it misses the story and chooses another part of the same speech by Sen. Lott: "Somebody once said, and I'm not quite sure where I got this, but I heard it, and I loved it, and it applies to Strom Thurmond: 'Youth is a gift of nature. Age is a work of art.' This, ladies and gentlemen, is a work of art."
Monday, Dec. 9
Most media still ignore the story except for NPR's All Things Considered.
Robert Siegel interviews Robert Dallek, the Boston University historian, about the 1948 presidential campaign and Thurmond's role in it. It begins by including the clip from the birthday party from the previous Thursday evening.
Another tipping point comes that day when two conservatives -- Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post and Rush Limbaugh on his radio program -- attack Sen. Lott for his remarks. Now instead of the usual liberals attacking Lott and Thurmond, it's conservative ideologues and possibly the White House on the attack -- a much meatier story. This seems to give permission to the rest of the media to go after the story.
Tuesday, Dec. 10
All major television networks finally report the story.
What Went Wrong?
In the end, not very much. Some wounded pride among very competitive journalists, but the story was still reported and the consequences are now being worked out. In my opinion, there was too much hesitancy on this story, possibly because Lott's background and political origins were known and had been reported before.
But the sequence of events brings to mind an old axiom: if you want to bury a story, report it on a Friday night. If you want it to have legs, report it on a Sunday night.
This is because the audiences for radio and television and the circulation of Saturday papers used to be the smallest of the week. Politicians used to know that if they had bad news to announce, Friday night around 6 p.m. was the best time.
Sunday afternoon, on the other hand, is desperation time in many newsrooms. Deadlines are looming and the news hole needs to be filled. News from a local representative about filling potholes in the district has a better chance in the Monday papers and newscasts, than if it were announced on a Wednesday or a Thursday. So does a political scandal that seems to keep growing.
The rise of Web and cable news has changed the axiom... but not as much as one might think, if the Lott story is any indication. Even so, a number of political Web sites such as www.politics.com and www.americanpolitics.com kept the story going through that weekend until the mainstream media could take it over.
Although Sen. Lott spoke on a Thursday night, it seemed as though many journalists were already in a Friday mode. A major snowstorm in Washington also helped to push the Lott story off the front pages. It was almost the story that never was... except for a few alert reporters and editors. One wonders what else are we missing? Thank goodness for C-SPAN.
For NPR, this was a case where the story was reported, then not followed up. The flow from weekday to weekend programs, and from newscasts to news programs -- usually seamless -- seems to have been less than rigorous on the Lott story.
Listeners may contact me at 202-513-3246 or at ombudsman@npr.org.
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
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