Legend In Their Own Minds

With the major media under increasing fire for their campaign coverage and exclusion of legitimate candidates from presidential debates, some in the media are trying to divert the public’s attention to the question of whether the political campaigns are engaging in “dirty tricks.” An ABC 20/20 story claimed this was shaping up as possibly the dirtiest campaign in history.

One of the stories cited by the news network¯the National Enquirer account of Democratic candidate John Edwards allegedly fathering a “love child” out of wedlock¯was denied but not disproven. Despite its reputation as a supermarket tabloid, the National Enquirer is the paper that broke the story, which was confirmed, of Jesse Jackson having an illegitimate child. Hence, the paper’s exclusives cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Until this ABC report, the mainstream media had not touched the Edwards story. However, the British newspaper The Daily Mail media ran a story citing Edwards’ denial of the affair.

What’s more, the “expert” provided by ABC News to supposedly prove the case of campaign dirty tricks turned out to be Larry Sabato, who is hawking a book about changing the U.S. Constitution and whose website advertises himself as “probably the most quoted college professor in the land.” His quotation is this case was clearly not warranted.

Citing some minor incidents, such as phone calls, emails and cards sent through the mail to some voters, Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, speculated that 2008 may well go down as one of the dirtiest campaigns in history, “precisely because of these dirty tricks.” This is a sensational but false charge.

Cliff Kincaid is editor of the AIM Report. He can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. Roger Aronoff is a media analyst with Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org. This article was excerpted from a special report that they wrote for AIM. The rest of the article can be read here.