NRR - Ann Coulter covergirl

It's a long one, but interesting. Taken from FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting FAIR ____________________________________Time Covers Coulter:Magazine's Cover Story a Sloppy, Inaccurate Tribute to Far-Right PunditApril 21, 2005A week after she was praised in Time magazine's "100 Most InfluentialPeople" issue (4/18/05), the magazine went a step further by makingfar-right pundit Ann Coulter the subject of a lengthy April 25 coverstory. Readers who might have looked for a critical examination of theoverexposed, factually challenged hatemonger found something else: a puffpiece that gave Coulter a pass on her many errors and vicious, oftenbigoted rhetoric.Throughout the article, Time reporter John Cloud gave Coulter everybenefit of the doubt. Her clear, amply documented record of inaccuracywas waved away. Coulter's notoriously vitriolic hate speech wasalternately dismissed as a put-on or excused as "from her heart," whilethe worst Cloud could say about her was that she can "occasionally becoarse." Time readers learned that Coulter is an omnivorous reader (oneof exactly two examples of her consumption being the Drudge Reportwebsite), and that she regards herself "as a public intellectual." Coulter, who writes a syndicated newspaper column and makes frequent cablenews appearances, is dubbed "iconic" by Time because she "epitomizes theway politics is now discussed on the airways."In reality, there are few who "discuss" politics the Coulter way-- bysmearing opponents as traitors, calling for a renewal of McCarthyism andendorsing the killing of reporters.--Coulter's Accuracy"Coulter has a reputation for carelessness with facts, and if you Googlethe words 'Ann Coulter lies,' you will drown in result," wrote Cloud. "But I didn't find many outright Coulter errors."That would depend on how one defines "many" or "outright." Websites likethe Daily Howler, Tapped, Media Matters and Spinsanity have pointed outliterally dozens of errors in Coulter's book Slander and other Coulterstatements. Coulter directed Cloud to one error she now admits to making,about the New York Times supposedly ignoring the death of NASCAR driverDale Earnhardt (an error she lied about making when she appeared on FAIR'sCounterSpin--8/9/02). Coulter managed to make yet another error in herexplanation to Cloud, but this didn't seem to lead Cloud to dig anydeeper. As Salon's Eric Boehlert pointed out (4/19/05), Slander'spublisher made five corrections after its initial printing-- and shouldhave made at least six more.But it's important to acknowledge that Coulter is, in a sense, hard to"fact check" because she rarely makes arguments based on facts. Appearingon television programs to say that liberals "want there to be lots of9/11s" (Fox News, 10/13/03) can either be treated as a serious argumentfor which she has no evidence, or explained away as "opinion." Such cheapand disgusting smears tend to be acceptable by mainstream mediastandards-- so long as they're coming out of Coulter's mouth.--Benefit of the doubtThroughout the article, Cloud presented instances where Coulter wasallegedly misunderstood or underappreciated. And in each case, Cloudeither gave Coulter a pass, or concluded that her opponents were wrong. Cloud generously wrote that Coulter "likes to shock reporters by wonderingaloud whether America might be better off if women lost the right tovote"-- as if she writes or speaks such things on national television onlyto get a rise out of journalists. Cloud also argued that Coulter can"write about gender issues with particular sensitivity," an odd trait toattribute to someone who recently claimed that women are "not that bright"(Fox News, 9/23/04).Cloud also recalled a TV debate over environmentalism where Coulteroffered her typical hyperbole: "God gave us the earth. We have dominionover the plants, the animals, the seas.... God said, 'Earth is yours. Takeit. Rape it. It's yours.'"Unfortunately, wrote Cloud, "her rape-the-planet bit would later bewrenched from context and repeatedly quoted as Coulter nuttiness." Thecontext, apparently, is that she was laughing when she said it-- and that,as Coulter put it, her critics "don't get the punch line"-- which was thatraping the Earth is preferable to "living like the Indians." Cloudadmitted that maybe not everyone would find the slur funny-- but doesn'tseem to understand that laughing about "raping" the Earth is no lessoffensive than making the suggestion with a straight face.In recounting two of Coulter's more notorious TV appearances, Cloud foundfault with everyone else. Recalling her firing from MSNBC fordisdainfully telling a disabled Vietnam vet, "No wonder you guys lost,"Cloud interjected that the veteran, Robert Muller, was incorrect when heclaimed that 90 percent of U.S. landmine casualties in Vietnam came from"our mines" used by enemy forces. Cloud-- who had been unable to findmany errors in Coulter's work-- rebutted Muller by saying that a 1969Pentagon report found that "90 percent of the components used in enemymines came from U.S. duds and refuse"-- a minor if not meaninglessdistinction. Cloud also recalled that the MSNBC incident "became aninfamous-- and oft-misreported-- Coulter moment" because outlets like theWashington Post had misquoted Coutler as saying, "People like you causedus to lose that war." Cloud ignored the fact that the source of theparaphrase was Coulter herself (Extra!, 11-12/02).Cloud also recounted a recent interview with the Canadian BroadcastingCorporation where Coulter, arguing that Canada should participate in thewar in Iraq, claimed that "Canada sent troops to Vietnam." When CBCinterviewer Bob McKeown said she was wrong about that, Coulter pledged toget back to them about it-- but never did. Cloud rushed to the rescue bynoting that "Canada did send noncombat troops to Indochina in the 1950sand again to Vietnam in 1972." Cloud is making quite a stretch to provethat Coulter was correct-- Canada was officially neutral during theVietnam War, so if any noncombat troops were sent (none are mentioned in adetailed 1975 U.S. Army history, Allied Participation in Vietnam), theywould not have been sent to support U.S. forces there. Again, Cloud wentout of his way to cast doubt on statements made by Coulter's critics,applying no such scrutiny to Coulter herself-- the ostensible subject ofhis article.--Coulter's BigotryCloud downplayed Coulter's record of rank bigotry and racism. Recountingher defense of racial profiling, Cloud wrote, "It would be easier toaccept Coulter's reasoning if a shadow of bigotry didn't attach to many ofher statements about Arabs and Muslims." Cloud did not explain how thisbigoted "shadow" mysteriously "attaches" itself to Coulter's words, butthe strange metaphor does serve to distance Coulter from her obvioushatefulness. Ironically, in another part of the story, Cloud recalledthat Coulter once wrote that school desegregation has led to "illiteratestudents knifing one another between acts of sodomy in the stairwell." One wonders if the "shadow" of racism will find its way to that statement
as well. Cloud also noted that Coulter once said in a speech, "Liberalsare about to become the last people to figure out that Arabs lie"-- acomment Cloud dubbed "flagrantly impolitic," as if it's simply bad form tomake a slanderous generalization about an entire ethnicity.--Misleading GraphicsTo illustrate the left's reaction to Coulter, the article was accompaniedby a photo of a demonstration where a poster labels Coulter a"neo-imperialist criminal" and an "enemy," and her mouth is covered by acensorious red X. "Protesters blast Coulter at the GOP Convention in NewYork City last year," the caption explained. What readers weren't told isthat the poster was a right-wing satire, part of a pro-Republicancounter-demonstration; Time cropped out the name of the organizationresponsible for the poster-- "Communists for Kerry"-- as well as anothersign behind it promoting "Criminals for Gun Control." Does Time reallypay so little attention to the graphics that it uses-- or was the croppingan attempt to make sure that readers wouldn't be in on the joke?(The online version of Time, which ran an uncropped version of the photo,now identifies the sign-holders as "pro-GOP protesters" and appends acorrection saying that "the original caption incorrectly stated that theseprotesters were blasting Coulter.")--Any Precedent?Time readers who aren't aware of Coulter's work might wonder why afar-right TV pundit would be worth so much attention. Some mediaobservers, like Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz (4/19/05), recalledthat filmmaker Michael Moore made the magazine's July 12, 2004 cover.Moore and Coulter share little in terms of tone or content; nonetheless,the comparison is worth exploring, since it reveals that Moore was held toa much different standard. The text on the Coulter cover asks, "Is sheserious or just having fun?" For Moore, the release of his filmFahrenheit 9/11 led Time to ask on its cover, "Is this good for America?"The Moore feature included a stand-alone sidebar that addressed hisalleged inaccuracies, and gave ample space to critics who derided themovie. On top of that, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan was given aseparate piece to savage Fahrenheit 9/11 along with Mel Gibson's "ThePassion of the Christ," calling them "crude, boring, gratuitous," andcharging Moore with using "innuendo, sly editing, parody, ridicule andsomber voiceovers to give his mere assertions a patina of truth."The point is not that Moore should be treated the same as Coulter. Infact, Moore's film was premiering across the country, smashing allbox-office records for documentaries, and had won international acclaim,making his work of bonafide journalistic interest. By contrast, Coulter'slatest book is a months-old collection of columns, and if not for ahandful of cable news appearances this year she would be almost completelyinvisible in the national debate.At one point, Cloud asked rhetorically: "How did such a flagrantlyimpolitic person become such a force in our politics?" The answer isobvious: The mainstream media has granted her the time and space tospread her message. And if Cloud's own credulous writing is anyindication, that's not going to change anytime soon.