Opinion
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The Post's campaign to 'Macaca' McDonnell takes a new tack
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
09/09/09 11:04 AM EDT
The Washington Post Metro page, sputtering in its attempts to “Macaca” Bob McDonnell on the basis of his 1989 Regent University thesis, has shown the “considerable ingenuity” I predicted last week in getting issues related to the McDonnell thesis on the paper’s front page.
Today’s front page story by Amy Gardner and its placement by Post editors on the front page is one of the most flagrant examples of electioneering by a paper’s news pages that I have ever seen. “Scrutiny Spreads to ’03 McDonnell Remarks,” the headline proclaims. The subhead reads, “’Homosexual Conduct’ Comments ‘Irrelevant’ to Campaign, He Says.” The obvious message to readers: this candidate thinks it’s all right to penalize people, in some unspecified way, for homosexual conduct.
The lead paragraph provides the specifics. “In January 2003, then-Del. Robert F. McDonnell helped gavel in one of the most extraordinary judicial reappointment hearings in Virginia history: a seven-hour, trial-like affair that led to questions about whether the future Republican gubernatorial candidate thought gays were fit to serve on the bench.”
Pretty ominous stuff: “led to questions.” But in fact those “questions” are pretty easily resolved. As they are, in the fifteenth paragraph of the story, on page A16, above ads for Mattress Discounters and Clyde’s Restaurant Group (and on page 2 of the story in the web version). “McDonnell also told the Virginian-Pilot: ‘Homosexuality is not an issue with regard to the qualifications of a judge. I imagine we have gay judges on the bench now. That's not a material inquiry.’”
The blatant purpose of this story is to suggest that McDonnell thinks that homosexuals should not serve as judges. But the fact is that he doesn’t think that.
There are numerous other examples of unfairness in the story. We read in the first paragraph, on the front page, that McDonnell “helped gavel in one of the most extraordinary judicial reappointment hearings in Virginia history: a seven-hour, trial-like affair.” Sounds sort of like the Salem witch trials, doesn’t it? Only in the tenth paragraph, on page A16, do we read that “McDonnell was credited by Republicans and Democrats fo making sure witnesses supporting [Judge] Askew were present at the hearing.”
We read in the third paragraph, on the front page, that “A majority, including McDonnell, voted against her reappointment.” We aren’t told what how many voted for and against, and we’re not told whether any Democrats voted with McDonnell to remove her. Did Amy Gardner suppress some information here that would make McDonnell look less like an ogre?
We read in the fourth paragraph, on the front page, that McDonnell indicated that Judge Askew’s sexual conduct was relevant, that he told a newspaper that “certain homosexual conduct” could disqualify someone to be a judge and that those words were widely publicized and “contributed to a lasting view that sexual orientation was at least one reason for Askew’s ouster.” That’s hardly surprising, since in the second paragraph we are told that there were allegations that Askew, a woman, had sexually harassed a female colleague. But we’re only told in the ninth paragraph, on page A16, that the city of Hampton settled the sexual harassment claim for $64,000 and that a state hearing officer ruled that the complainant was forced to resign her job “in part because of retaliation.”
The 1989 Regent University thesis is dredged up in the seventh and eighth paragraph of the story. Presumably we can expect that every Post story on McDonnell between now and November must include a reference to the thesis.
Only when we get to the twelfth paragraph of the story do we get to read McDonnell’s statements that “contributed to a lasting view that sexual orientation was at least one reason for Askew’s ouster.” McDonnell is quoted as saying, “There is certain homosexual conduct that is in violation of the law. I’m not telling you I would disqualify a judge per se if he said he was gay. I’m talking about their actions.” I’m puzzled as to why this is controversial. Homosexual rape if certainly in violation of the law; homosexual sexual harassment certainly could be. One might reasonably object to reapportionment of a judge found responsible for such conduct, just as one might reasonably object to reappointment of a judge found responsible for heterosexual rape or heterosexual sexual harassment.
Amy Gardner’s story and the Post’s placement of it on the front could be used in journalism schools as a classic example of a newspaper using its news pages to affect the outcome of an election. On the front page it suggests that McDonnell is the kind of bigoted person its targeted audience—the culturally liberal voters of Northern Virginia in the Post’s circulation area—would never want to vote for, while the exculpatory material is buried on page A16, above the Mattress Discounter and Clyde’s Restaurant Group ads. There is undoubtedly some sort of prize for this kind of advocacy journalism, and Amy Gardner and the Post’s news editors have done a lot to earn it.
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