He's No Pinocchio.

• Author: PARRY, ROBERT
• Position: Media coverage of Al Gore misrepresents him

How the press has exaggerated Al Gore's exaggerations

AL GORE MAY COME ACROSS TO MANY Americans as a smart guy with lots of experience and a clunky personal style. But the national news media have repeatedly portrayed the vice president in a much more sinister light: as a willful liar who may even live in a world of his own delusions.

This harsh assessment has been handed down across the media spectrum--from The Washington Post to The Washington Times, from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC's cable networks to the traveling press corps. Journalists and pundits freely denounce Gore as "a liar," "delusional," "Pinocchio," a "Zelig" character who inserts himself into improbable historical events.

Gore certainly has contributed to his own media problem with some imprecise phrasing and the kinds of exaggerations that all candidates make on the campaign trail. But journalists seem to have singled out Gore for extraordinary attention, with story after story reprising Gore's alleged pattern of deception.

But an examination of dozens of these articles, which purport to detail the chief cases of Gore's exaggerations and lies, finds journalists often engaging in their own exaggerations or even publishing outright falsehoods about Gore.

In December, for instance, the news media generated a small tidal wave of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the one that started it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, "lied."

But the Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant. The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times filed grudging corrections.

The Love Canal controversy began on Nov. 30 when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes.

As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s.

"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee--that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After the hearings, Gore said, "We passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone--"that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist. "Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "`I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. `I had the first hearing on this issue.'... Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. `I was the one that started it all,' he said." [WP, Dec. 1, 1999]

The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the one that started it all."

The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable--in the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness--and it would be funny if it weren't also a little scary."

The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the one that started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the one who started it all."

In just one day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the one that started it all" to "I was the one that started it all" to "I was the one who started it all."

Spinning Out of Control

Instead of taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone got the wrong impression. But the fun was just beginning.

The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new exaggeration.

"Let's talk about the `love' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of CNBC's "Hardball." "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan O'Neal...