August 1, 2002
Truth to order on page 1
Truth to order on page 1
Can you believe your eyes?
The Buffalo News, on its front page for July 30, 2002, had large above-the-fold color photographs of Erie CountyExecutive Joel Giambra, whom the paper supports, and Buffalo Common Council President James Pitts, whom the paper does not support.
Giambra is full-frontal: you can see both ears and white on either side of both pupils. He is wearing reading glasses, looking slightly upward, like a college professor addressing a large class. He has a thoughtful smile on his face, as if he's just had an interesting idea he knows you'll like. His lips are slightly pursed, as if he's about to say something witty, or perhaps he's hoping for a kiss.
Pitts is photographed at an angle, perhaps in bright sun. He squints, one eye more closed than the other, deep in shadow, hard to see. The pupil you can see is shifted all the way to the side. The very bright light on his forehead burns out all the detail. His teeth are slightly separated, like he's speaking angrily or about to bite.
Accurate photos of what they two men really look like? What story are the pictures telling? Someone who has never met Pitts looked at the photo and said, "He looks satanic." Why would the Buffalo News juxtapose an almost-academic straight-on image of Joel Giambra with an oblique image of a satanic James Pitts?
The power of the press
Everything in a newspaper is instrumental. Newspapers aren't just facts; they're also strategies. Show a politician scowling all the time and people begin to think he's an angry, scowly guy. Show him smiling and people think he's pleasant. Photographs are codes we know so well we don't even stop to think about them.
In 1962, a close election in Indiana for US senator was swung by juxtaposed photos above the fold on page 1 of a town's only daily newspaper.
Homer Capehart, a very conservative Republican who had been in the senate for years, was being challenged by a young state legislator named Birch Bayh. A few days before the election, Bayh was trailing by several percentage points and it seemed very unlikely he'd catch up. Capehart had the money, the political machine, the recognition.
Then, the day before the election, the Indianapolis Star published side by side pictures of the two men. Bayh was in shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned, tie loosened, in a food market parking lot, talking with a small group of women shoppers. Capehart was in a factory, leaning against a lathe, his dark suit jacket unbuttoned across his big belly, a big cigar in his hand.
The next day, Bayh astonished everyone by beating Capehart by several percentage points. Researchers trying to explain the unexpected last minute shift found that a large number of women had seen those two pictures and had shifted their votes from Capehart to Bayh. It wasn't that Capehart was old and fat and Bayh young, slim and good-looking. Rather, they said, it was because Capehart looked like the evil factory boss they'd seen caricatured so often in political cartoons. The fact that Capehart wasn't like that had nothing to do with it: they saw that pair of images and they knew who the good guy was.
Telling the story
The photographs of Giambra and Pitts are part of a three-column-wide piece by Patrick Lakamp titled "Regionalism rears its head in redistricting debate." Lakamp's first two paragraphs are:
To those watching from the suburbs who thought that cutting the size of the Buffalo Common Council was a quarrel pitting city leaders against each other, common Council James W. Pitts—and many of his supporters—are sending a different message:
Read that closely: the argument isn't over the best model for city government or a better way to serve the city's residents. It's about James Pitts and his supporters (who the Buffalo News has painted relentlessly as black and racist) and folks in the suburbs. And something is coming your way. Your way. Oh boy: why did you move to the suburbs, anyway?The debate is coming your way.
The rest of the article doesn't get much better: it's basically about Giambra and his point of view. Giambra is quoted directly several times, as are several people who agree with him. The few Pitts quotations seem to have been cherrypicked out of various public events. Lakamp says Pitts declined being interviewed for this piece. Pitts says Lakamp only contacted him at the last minute and he didn't want to get sandbagged by Lakamp once again. He got sandbagged anyway.
That prose, those juxtaposed images. This isn't journalism. It's target practice.
—Bruce Jackson