A news story in yesterday's New York Times had declared that by selecting Richard Cheney as his running mate, Governor George W. Bush "made a risk-free and respectable choice." Today's front-page news analysis furiously back-pedals away from that statement, saying, "The Cheney pick is not devoid of political upsides -- or risks," and concluding with the statement, "in politics, even playing it safe has risks."
But it's not just from one day to the next that the Times is inconsistent. Take the two front-page stories that run in today's Times about the selection of Mr. Cheney. They don't even agree on what Mr. Cheney was doing during the press conference. One article reports that Mr. Cheney "seemed to be trying to hide his grin. He often cast his eyes downward and could not decide what to do with his hands, which were alternately deep in his pockets or clasped modestly in front of him." The other article reports that "Mr. Cheney stood placidly next to Mr. Bush, his hands clasped in front of him." Which is it, fidgety or placid? Maybe the reason the Times ran both stories on the front page was to give its readers the choice of which account to believe.
(Neither article explains why what the vice presidential candidate does with his hands during the press conference is so important, anyway. Maybe it's old newsroom wisdom: As the reporters were headed out to the press conference, the editor barked, "Always watch what the vice presidential candidate does with his hands during a press conference. You never know when he might reach for a gun or try to pick the pocket of the presidential candidate." In the event, nothing so exciting happened, and the reporters had to make do with analyzing whether the veep candidate's hands were in "pockets" or "clasped.")
Another Choice: Another story where the Times this morning offers its readers a choice of accounts is President Clinton's comparison of the Camp David summit to a visit to the dentist. The front-page news story, which continues inside the paper, quotes the president as saying "This is like going to the dentist without have your gums deadened." Another story, on page A11 of New York editions, serves up the same quote with a slightly different verb structure: "a deeply frustrated Mr. Clinton compared the days of painstaking talks that ended in failure to 'going to the dentist without having your gums deadened.'"
Note, too, in that second rendition, the use by the Times of the word "failure" to describe the inability of the parties to reach an agreement on sharing Jerusalem. There may be plenty of Israelis and Palestinian Arabs who consider the lack of such a deal to be not a failure but a success, but the Times disagrees with them, as its editorial and its use of language in the news accounts make clear.