Laughing at the White House Press Corps

Vice President Dick Cheney isn't often in the center of the media spotlight, but when he is, it's significant. And what has he been in the media for doing lately?

Accidentally shooting a lawyer.

What some people consider to be a punchline to a lawyer joke, the media consider to be a serious news story. However, the media have deemed it newsworthy, not just because it happened, but because it took 18 hours after the incident for the media to be alerted. After all, there was only the matter of the victim of the shooting being treated and transported to the hospital to be dealt with. Surely someone could have picked up a phone and told the Associated Press!

What has me smiling is how the media have decided that Cheney's hunting accident deserves more media coverage than other more important issues. Able Danger, the situation with Hamas, how "Big Momma's House 2" got to be the number one movie in the country, all of these issues pushed to the side by the Cheney hunting accident. It even became the focal point of a Monday morning White House press briefing. Some are even suggesting Cheney could be impeached over the accident, since it came out that Cheney didn't have a $7 stamp on his Texas hunting license.

Lying under oath about playing "Hide the Cigar" with a chunky intern isn't impeachable, but a $7 hunting stamp is? Waiter, check please.

The hunting accident is a non-story of the highest caliber, if you'll pardon the pun. Then again, if you didn't pardon the pun or the rest of my jokes, you wouldn't be reading, would you? Anyway, the coverage of the accident is a prime of example of what the modern media do: they take something insignificant, hype it to the point that everyone talks about it, and then lets it drop after it runs out of juice. How else do you think we know about Lindsey Lohan's weight changes? I mean, aside from the Wall Street Journal.

This type of hyped reporting has found its way into political reporting, as well. How many Bush scandals have come and gone since 2000? Bush was AWOL. Enron. Scooter Libby. Reading My Pet Goat on 9/11. Domestic wiretapping. The Downing Street Memos. No WMDs in Iraq. Jack Abramoff. Each one has had its day in the media sun, at least until the media realized that nobody really cared about any of these. Granted, some have made more repeat performances than Cher has had farewell concerts, but by and large, each of these has been white hot early and cooled off just as quickly.

Of course, none of this would have happened if the media had followed a simple rule I learned back in journalism school: research before you report. Either that or always wear pants when doing a television interview. This is getting more difficult to do with the 24 hour news cycle, which might explain why they were upset at being kept out of the loop for 18 hours. To them, this was a big story, and the time it took people to contact the media about it meant they couldn't jump on the story as quickly as they would like. Not to mention, the big guns in the media were scooped by a small Texas newspaper. That goes over as well as a showing of "Fahrenheit 911" at a Republican fundraiser.

There is also another downside to this type of hype first, report later style of reporting. It doesn't work too well with people who are not concerned with shameless self-promotion. By the accounts of the events, Cheney was more concerned with making sure the guy he accidentally shot got medical attention and was doing okay at the hospital. Then, he left it to the person who owned the land to release the information. This was a smart move on Cheney's part because it showed he at least considered the owner's privacy.

Imagine Al Gore being in this same situation. He would be out front telling people about what he did and how he took the initiative in the creation of not just bird shot, but in the creation of the medical techniques necessary to save the victim's life. Of course, nobody would catch all of what Gore said because the reporters would be asleep within seconds of him starting to talk....

But Cheney isn't like that. He may be many things, but one thing he isn't is addicted to media coverage. That means the media have to either work harder to get the stories they get on him or they have to hype what few stories they can get on him. And that leads to the type of sloppy journalism we've seen with the coverage of the hunting accident. To them, it doesn't matter that the local police have dismissed the incident as an accident, and by most accounts of the events (DemocraticUnderground notwithstanding), it was.

But the media can't let it go just yet. They have to get as much mileage as they can out of the non-story. To try to give the story legs, they have to create conspiracy theories about the sinister reasons behind the events because people love juicy scandals. So, we'll have another week or so of coverage before it fades away into the media chatter and a new non-story takes its place. Think of it like getting fast food. You don't expect very much for what you're getting and you're rarely disappointed.

That, and the newer employees have to wear paper hats and name tags that read "Trainee."
 
Thomas Lindaman is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. He is also Publisher of CommonConservative.com.