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cut and paste === Where does spin come from? Inventing the Internet CHAPTER I—GORE IGNORED: The press corps’ twenty-month War against Gore began on March 11, 1999. Two days earlier, Gore had given an interview to Wolf Blitzer for a special, weeknight broadcast of CNN’s Late Edition. Gore was the sitting vice president of the United States, and the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. As such, the taped session was previewed and promoted by the network. It was Gore’s “first on-camera interview since filing as a candidate,” one CNN promo said. A year of impeachment had come to an end; Gore’s informal campaigning was about to begin. And a spin campaign from the Washington press corps would follow in extremely short order. This campaign would be built on a nasty charge—the charge that Candidate Gore was a liar. The theme would dominate campaign coverage for the entire twenty months of the race. In the Late Edition interview, Blitzer asked Gore to explain what set him apart from Bill Bradley, his opponent for the Dem nomination. Somewhat clumsily, Gore offered a list of career accomplishments. One part of his answer drew more attention than any remark by any candidate in the entire 2000 campaign. “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” Gore said. “I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.” On the whole, this was the kind of chest-thumping statement which candidates routinely make on the stump. But as anyone who followed this election will know, Gore’s initial, sixteen-word comment was widely dissected for the next twenty months. Almost surely, Gore’s brief remark about the Net was the most widely-discussed statement of Campaign 2000. The spinning of this one remark drove a nasty War Against Gore—a spin campaign which almost surely decided the 2000 race. Gore’s remark would be widely attacked. But surprise! At the time Gore made his statement, it received no attention whatever. Blitzer didn’t ask Gore to explain his remark; he showed no surprise at what Gore had said. And in its on-air promotions for the taped interview, CNN showed no sign of thinking that Gore had “made news” with his comment. Meanwhile, major papers which covered Gore’s interview completely ignored the comment. On March 10, for example, the Washington Post ran a full report about the Gore-Blitzer session. But the paper only discussed Gore’s remarks on U.S. relations with China. On March 11, the Washington Times’ Greg Pierce reviewed the interview in his “Inside Politics” column. But Pierce only mentioned what Gore had said about early campaign polling. Similarly, the AP’s dispatches about Gore’s interview completely ignored his Internet comment. And another major organ passed over Gore’s statement. On March 10, the Hotline—the widely-read, on-line digest of the day’s political news—ran extensive excerpts from the Late Edition Q-and-A’s, but omitted the Internet remark altogether. In fact, in the first two days after Gore’s appearance, no press entity remarked, in any way, on what Gore said about the Net. Gore’s comment would be critiqued, attacked, burlesqued and spun over the course of the next twenty months. But it evoked no reaction from the press—none at all—at the time Gore made it. Repeat: No one in the press said even one word about Gore’s statement at the time it was made. No one showed the slightest sign of thinking Gore’s comment was notable. Why did Gore’s comment provoke no reaction? Perhaps because Blitzer and others knew that Gore had taken the leadership, within the Congress, in developing what we now call the Internet. Gore was explicitly discussing his achievements in Congress, and if “I took the initiative” meant “I took the leadership,” his statement was perfectly accurate. (Extemporaneous speech doesn’t always parse perfectly. Everyone in Washington knows this.) Indeed, as Gore’s remark began attracting wide scrutiny, some journalists reviewed his congressional record—and a wide array of Internet pioneers described his key role, within the Congress, in creating what we now call the Net. In the March 21 Washington Post, for example, Jason Schwartz quoted several Internet pioneers, including Vinton Cerf, the man often called “the father of the Internet.” Cerf praised Gore’s role in the Net’s development. “I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president,” he said. Meanwhile, Katie Hafner, author of a book on the Internet’s origins, penned a short piece in the New York Times, quoting experts who said that Gore “helped lift the Internet from relative obscurity and turn it into a widely accessible, commercial network.” On March 18, Gore tried to clarify his remark in an interview with USA Today. “I did take the lead in the Congress,” he told Chuck Raasch; he described his Internet work in detail. Raasch quoted Gore’s explanation—but it was mentioned in no other paper. How well-known was Gore’s leadership role? The press corps was full of experienced scribes who knew all about his work in this area. We’ll let the Nexis archives guide us as we review this familiar old tale. According to Nexis, the Washington Post’s first reference to the Internet occurred in November 1988; a “virus” had attacked the little-known network, which connected some 50,000 computers, the Post said. But as journalists began to report on the Net, Gore’s key role in its development was clear. One month later, for example, Martin Walker wrote this in The Guardian: WALKER (12/30/88): American computing scientists are campaigning for the creation of a “superhighway” which would revolutionise data transmission. Legislation has already been laid before Congress by Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, calling for government funds to help establish the new network, which scientists say they can have working within five years, at a cost of Dollars 400 million. Nine months later, the Post reported that the Bush administration “plans to unveil tomorrow an ambitious plan to spend nearly $2 billion enhancing the nation’s technological know-how, including the creation of a high-speed data ‘superhighway’ that would link more than 1,000 research sites around the country.” This network was “comparable to an interstate highway system for electronic data,” the paper said—and it noted that “a similar plan has been proposed by Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), whose legislation also proposes creating a vast electronic library that could be accessed by users seeking federally gathered information.” Simply put, Gore’s leadership role had been widely reported—and was thoroughly understood in the press. How well known was Gore’s work in this area? Five years later, the Internet was becoming well known, and the Washingtonian’s Alison Schneider looked back on its years of development: SCHNEIDER (12/94): Internet. There’s no escaping it. It seems like only yesterday that Al Gore was preaching the merits of the I-way to a nation that still thought the Net was something used only for catching butterflies. Duh! Within the press corps, everyone knew that Gore was the leader, within the Congress, in creating what we now call the Net. Indeed, by the time of the 2000 election, even one of Gore’s long-standing foes was praising his work in this area. On September 1, 2000, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addressed the American Political Science Association. His remarks were broadcast on C-SPAN: GINGRICH: In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got , we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.
Gingrich knew what Gore had done. Indeed, Gore and Gingrich had almost been friendly rivals in these technological areas. Their leadership roles had long been clear. In 1995, for example, the New York Times’ Peter Lewis attended a national cyberspace conference, where he interviewed a group of Gingrich supporters. “A number of participants said Mr. Gingrich had effectively seized the mantel of top Government cyberspace visionary from Vice President Al Gore, who is credited with creating the phrase ‘information superhighway,’” Lewis wrote. Long before the press corps ginned up the Internet flap, Lewis’ statement reflected what everyone knew—that Gore had enjoyed a long-standing reign as the government’s King of the Net.
Had Gore misstated his role to Blitzer? This notion would be aggressively bruited throughout Campaign 2000, but you had to work very hard to tease a lie out of Gore’s statement. Gore had said this: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. Gingrich said this: Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet. It’s hard to torture a difference from that pair of statements, and a Gore biographer, the Post’s David Maraniss, seemed to complete the Rule of Three. In August 2000, Maraniss said this on CNN’s Reliable Sources: “Gore really was instrumental in developing the Internet. He was the one congressman who understood the whole thing in the ’70s, when no other congressman gave a darn about it.” Had Gore misrepresented his leadership role? Only those determined to make him a liar would have drawn that tendentious conclusion. Unfortunately, many journalists were eager to do that—a fact which would become crystal clear.
Indeed, Gore’s remark about the Net would become a cause celebre. Completely ignored at the time it was made, it became an iconic example of an alleged character problem—Gore’s widely-flogged “problem with the truth.” For two years, Gore would be savaged as a liar—many pundits would call him “delusional”—and his Internet comment would be Exhibit A in their endless assault on his character and integrity. But look again at what three men said, and convince yourself that it really did happen. Convince yourself that, for two solid years, Gore was denounced by the press as a liar; denounced for a comment which created no interest—none at all—in the press at the time it was made:
Al Gore, 3/9/99: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Newt Gingrich, 9/1/00: Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.
David Maraniss, 8/26/00: Gore really was instrumental in developing the Internet. He was the one congressman who understood the whole thing in the ’70s.
Two of these men remained major pundits. One of these men stood condemned as a liar. But so it went throughout Campaign 2000 as the press corps conducted its War Against Gore. So it went as a deeply dysfunctional press corps made a joke of your White House election.
CHAPTER II—THE RNC SPEAKS: How was Gore made into a liar? Gore made his comment on March 9; after two days of silence from the press corps, the RNC swung into action. At mid-day on Thursday, March 11, a story written by Michelle Mittelstadt appeared on the AP wire. “Republicans pounce on Gore’s claim that he created the Internet,” the headline said. But had Gore really said he created the Internet? A new GOP press release said that he had—and so did the new AP headline. Indeed, showing off her writerly skills, Mittelstadt began her crucial report with a second tendentious paraphrase:
MITTELSTADT: Vice President Al Gore’s claim that he is the father of the Internet drew amused protests Thursday from congressional Republicans.
But had Gore really said he was father of the Internet? The language was entertaining—and highly tendentious—but it wasn’t drawn from Gore’s actual statement. No matter—on the morning of March 11, GOP leaders had released statements in which they’d attacked Gore’s remark. Mittelstadt began with Dick Armey:
MITTELSTADT: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said that even under the time-honored tradition of politicians taking credit for everything, Gore’s statement is an “outrageous claim.”
Gore, who is widely credited for coining the term “information superhighway,” raised eyebrows with a pronouncement he made Tuesday during a CNN interview.
As we’ve seen, that last statement by Mittelstadt was wildly misleading. Gore’s “pronouncement” hadn’t “raised any eyebrows” with Blitzer, for example; Blitzer said nothing when Gore made his statement. Nor had it “raised any eyebrows” at the AP itself; on March 9 and 10, the service had filed several reports on the interview, none of which mentioned Gore’s comment. No, Gore’s “pronouncement” had only “raised eyebrows” among his Republican political rivals, several of whom Mittelstadt now quoted. For example, she quoted Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who said, “Gore taking credit for creating the Internet certainly gives new meaning to the term ‘March madness.’” The next day, the AP quoted a press release from RNC chairman Jim Nicholson. “Al Gore the father of the Internet?” he asked. Gore was “claim credit for other people’s successes,” according to the RNC chief. (Nicholson, of course, would play the press corps for fools throughout the election. Revisit his tour of the fancy hotel. Links are provided below.)
In her influential report, Mittelstadt committed one of the press corps’ most common sins; she took an unremarkable statement by Gore and paraphrased it in the most tendentious way possible—which also happened to be the way Gore’s political rivals were spinning it. Had Gore ever claimed to be “father of the Internet?” The language didn’t appear in his statement, but it now led Mittelstadt’s AP report. And now, the press corps—having ignored Gore’s remark for two solid days—began to file excited reports uncritically adopting the GOP’s spin-points. Indeed, some of the GOP’s most tendentious language was simply adopted, word-for-word, by major members of the press. On March 11, for example, Sensenbrenner’s press release carried this headline: “DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: VICE PRESIDENT GORE TAKES CREDIT FOR CREATING THE INTERNET.” On March 12, Lou Dobbs cribbed from the statement on Moneyline, his nightly CNN program. Dobbs called Gore’s remarks “a case study tonight in delusions of grandeur,” just as Sensenbrenner had done. And Gore “apparently thinks he’s the Father of the Internet,” Dobbs said, using a key phrase from Nicholson’s statement! That’s right, kids! Dobbs took “delusions of grandeur” straight from Sensenbrenner, and “father of the Internet” straight from Nicholson; like Mittelstadt, he directly adopted the GOP’s tendentious accounts of what Gore supposedly said. But there were a few things Lou Dobbs didn’t do in his report, in which he trashed Gore for his “delusions.” He didn’t describe Gore’s important work in the Congress—and he never quoted Gore’s actual statement. But so it would go throughout this election, as RNC-scripted spinners like Dobbs ginned up nasty campaigns against Gore, confounding ideas about who runs the media. On March 11, the GOP said that Gore had “delusions of grandeur.” The next day, CNN—which said nothing about Gore’s remark in real time—went ahead and used the nasty phrase too.
But then, Dobbs’ cutting-and-pasting about the Net pointed to what was to come. In three easy steps, Gore’s completely unremarkable comment was turned into something “delusional.” First, his explicit reference to the congressional context was dropped from standard press accounts. If Gore was quoted at all, his sixteen words were pared down to eight: “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Then, eight words were whittled to three—Gore said he created the Internet (this, of course, was the formulation which led Sensenbrenner’s release). Finally, the word “invented,” which Gore never used, became the press corps’ verb of choice. All over the press corps—all over TV—citizens were told a remarkable story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet!!! The absurd presentation was in place almost instantly, with worried pundits wracking their brains about why Gore had made such a puzzling statement. Here, for example, are early passages from just one paper—that very same paper, the Washington Times, to which Gore referred last week:
John McCaslin, 3/16/99: he Gore 2000 campaign…office has already gotten a taste of what it’s in for after Mr. Gore recently took credit for inventing the Internet.
Ralph Z. Hallow, 3/16/99: Relaxed and ready to enjoy his second and better-prepared go at the GOP nomination, joked in an interview yesterday about Vice President Al Gore’s claim of having invented the Internet.
Rowan Scarborough, 3/16/99: “This one is going to stick,” said William Kristol, editor and publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard. ‘Al Gore. Inventor of the Internet.’”
Editorial, 3/18/99: Mr. Gore has some explaining to do to parents. As everyone now knows, Mr. Gore invented the Internet, which means the vice president is responsible for making hard-core pornography available to elementary schoolchildren at the local library.
Robert Tyrell, 3/19/99: Did you hear Trent Lott is claiming to have invented the paper clip? Some think he is making a joke at the expense of Al Gore’s megalomaniacal claims about inventing the Internet.
A powerful propaganda campaign had begun. “veryone now knows,” the Times said sarcastically, that Al Gore invented the Internet. Strangely, the paper had said no such thing on March 10 and 11, when it first reviewed the Gore-Blitzer session. Amazing, isn’t it? Al Gore said he invented the Internet—and the aggressively anti-Gore Times failed to notice! But then, no one in the press corps noticed this “statement” by Gore—until the RNC gimmicked it up.
The Times, of course, is a conservative paper; it battered Gore for the next twenty months over matters large, small and invented. But with startling speed, the notion that Al Gore said he invented the Internet became mainstream press dogma too. Pundits ran to recite the new story—pundits who hadn’t said a word until the RNC spoke. How quickly was Gore chided for saying he invented the Internet? USA Today used the phrase on March 15 (editorial headline: “Inventing the Internet”). That same day, Al Kamen used the phrase in his Washington Post column (he quoted a joke by a GOP spokesman). On March 16, Hardball’s Chris Matthews mocked Gore for saying he “invented the Internet.” On March 17, Judy Woodruff, hosting CNN’s Inside Politics, chided Gore as “inventor of the Internet.” The embellished phrase reached the Los Angeles Times on March 18; the Boston Globe on March 20; the Associated Press on March 22. With blinding speed, the corps had invented a thrilling new story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet! And none of these news orgs had mentioned this “fact”—until the RNC scripted the spin.
With remarkable speed, the tendentious claim became Standard Issue. All over the press corps, pundits accused Gore of having said he invented the Net. The high (or low) point in this growing burlesque came in a June 2 USA Today story. In a report about problems with Gore’s early campaign, Mimi Hall penned this laughable—but completely inexcusable—account of what Gore had said:
HALL: A couple of Gore gaffes, including his assertion that he “invented” the Internet, didn’t help.
And yes, incredibly, that’s the way Hall wrote it; the one word Hall put inside quotes was the one word which Gore never said! It’s hard to know how scribes can be so inept, but Hall was hardly alone in her blunder. On June 16, as Gore formally launched his campaign, Elaine Povich—also deriding Gore’s alleged “gaffes”— matched Hall in the pages of Newsday:
POVICH: It was another gaffe in a series of missteps so far in Gore’s campaign—including…his widely mocked assertion that he “invented” the Internet.
Incredible, isn’t it? But in Campaign 2000, it happened routinely: Tendentious paraphrase was transformed into a “quote” as the press corps embellished the news to push spin-lines. For the next two years, the press corps’ embellished account would be the statement of record, passed on, inside quotes, as if Gore really said it. Millions of voters would come to believe that Gore really had made the odd claim.
Povich was actually right on one point. By the weekend of March 14, Gore was, in fact, being “widely mocked” for saying he invented the Internet. From this point on, Gore’s congressional achievements would rarely be mentioned; his unremarkable statement would be deftly transformed. The Washington press hadn’t said a word when Gore made his actual statement. Now, the corps was off and running on a two-year attack on Gore’s character. But so it went as the Washington press corps made a joke of your White House election. Such spin campaigns would be ginned up all through the 2000 race. For the record, the “farm chores” hoax began on March 16, five days after the Internet nonsense. It also began with an RNC press release. See below for links.
Invented the Internet? Gore’s recent statement to the New York Observer referred to precisely this kind of press coverage. Invented the Internet is an obvious case in which “Republican talking points” were deftly “injected” into the work of the mainstream press. No one—no one!—said a word about Gore’s remark at the time it was made. But when the RNC sent out its points, pundits simply ran to recite them. And so it went, throughout the campaign, as the RNC scripted your hapless press corps. Indeed, there’s long been a phrase for such work of this type. As the RNC sent out its points, the press corps became useful idiots.
And readers, the spinning ain’t over. The people who took part in this effort during Campaign 2000 will now pretend they have no idea what Gore could be talking about. Do RNC spin-points rule the press? Pundits will swear that no such thing occurs. And on the fringes of their current dissembling, a deeply repulsive little man will even say that Gore’s comments are “loony”—so loony, he says, that Gore needs help.
In fact, it’s the American people who really need help—protection from their press corps’ misconduct. But don’t expect that help to come from within the press corps itself. All our pundits played some role in the twenty-month War Against Gore. We keep waiting for some brave soul to speak. But right now, their money is still spending good, and the press corps’ relentless dissembling moves forward. Joe Scarborough can tell you the truth—Mara can’t. Just check out the latest remarks by Charles K if you expect their misconduct to stop.
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