"I've been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years," Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. . . . "From the time I began writing about politics," Dowd said, "I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes." Now, she said, "you are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I've treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves."
—New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, responding to charges of sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton in the column of Times public editor Clark Hoyt (6/22/08)

When liberals denigrate the president as a "boy" or as a "sissy," to quote Maureen Dowd, homophobia doesn't lurk far behind.
—Andrew Sullivan, Salon (10/25/02)

In her January 18 New York Times column, Maureen Dowd decided that the best way to criticize the Democratic Party was to feminize it. Calling Al Gore and John Kerry “girlie men” and equating the Democrats with "Desperate Housewives," she argued that the Democrats do not have enough fight in them and their attacks will never yield success "as long as they’re perceived as the party in skirts."

When Barack Obama decided to reject public financing in the general election, corporate media and Republican partisans made an identical attack, claiming that Obama broke a promise to take public funding. Unfortunately, this claim was demonstrably untrue: Obama hadn't made an unconditional promise to take public financing.

The New York Times (6/20/08) referred to Obama's "decision to break an earlier pledge to take public money." NPR (All Things Considered, 6/19/08) reported, "Earlier, Obama had said he would participate in public financing if his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, did the same." NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon (6/21/08) went even further, falsely asserting that Obama had admitted to "reversing his pledge to take public financing."

NBC Nightly News (6/19/08) reported that Obama "did promise to observe the limits if his opponent did." Chris Matthews on MSNBC (6/19/08) accused Obama of "breaking his principles, breaking his word." The New York Post (6/20/08) headline was "Going Barack on His Word."

When Republican presidential contender John McCain called on June 17 for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, corporate media framing of the debate that followed helped sell his position. Journalists focused more on the political calculations of the move and its supposed populist appeal—while downplaying the question of whether or not offshore drilling would do what supporters argued it would.

Much of the coverage led voters to believe that such drilling would have an immediate effect on oil prices. "Sen. John McCain has come out with an idea for how to solve the nation's current oil-related energy crisis," announced NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (6/17/08). On ABC World News, anchor Charles Gibson explained (6/18/08) that George W. Bush's father had issued an executive order banning offshore drilling: "Today, the president said that reversing his father's decision would be one way to drive down the price of gas. At today's prices, there's $2.5 trillion of oil off the coast. Little wonder it's getting so much attention."

Many reporters also found ways to play on themes of populism. Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in the New York Times (6/20/08) that the drilling question is "just the kind of pocketbook matter that resonates strongly with the working-class voters."

Skeptics of the drilling plan, meanwhile, had their motives questioned. Sean Hannity of Fox's Hannity & Colmes (6/17/08) asked guest George Will, "Do you think there's an anti-capitalist sentiment behind this, too?" "Good heavens, yes," responded Will.

Cherry-Picking Intelligence

The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report didn't really conclude that the White House was playing games with pre–Iraq invasion intelligence, argued Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt (6/9/08): "On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements 'were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.'" Hiatt failed to quote the rest of the sentence from the report: " . . . but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community." Hiatt also wrote: "On chemical weapons, then? 'Substantiated by intelligence information.'" Yet the report said that Bush and Cheney's statements "regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing." The Senate report clarifies in the beginning: "A public statement that selectively uses only that intelligence that supports a particular policy position . . . may be accurate on its face but present a slanted picture nonetheless." The same can be said for Hiatt's column.

Blood for Oil