WHEN THE LEFT cannot defeat Republican politicians at the ballot box, it regularly resorts to lawfare -- taxpayer-funded civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions -- to try to drive them from office or punish them. The model in Texas was the prosecution of former House Speaker Tom Delay. Many years and millions of dollars later, he beat the rap, every last element of it.
Prosecutors were humiliated, legally speaking, but triumphant politically. Our own Houston Chronicle -- after years of cheerleading from the sidelines -- lacked the grace to cover Mr. DeLay's exoneration honestly or to consider its own moral culpability for supporting such an egregious abuse of the legal system. Mr. DeLay was still a bad man, newspaper editors muttered sourly.
The latest abuse of the Texas legal system to hurt a political adversary, of course, is the case of former Governor Rick Perry's threatened and actual veto of state funds for the Travis County District Attorney's office. That office is now retaliating with charges designed to hurt the former Texas governor's campaign for the Republication nomination for president.
Friday, however, a state appeals court threw out one of the two charges against Mr. Perry. The Chronicle properly put the story on page one of today's newspaper and wrote a righteous headline: "Appeals court tosses charge in victory for Perry."
But the Chronicle hates Rick Perry and could not bring itself to do a straightforward story on Mr. Perry's legal and moral victory. The subhead and the story (by Peggy Fikac, who is smart and talented and should know better) do all that can be done to turn Mr. Perry's lemonade into a lemon.
The subhead, not the headline, tells what the story is really about, in the eyes of the Chronicle: "But cloud of one criminal indictment still hangs over the former governor."
The lemonade-to-lemon pivot comes in the first paragraph:
AUSTIN -- A state appeals court on Friday tossed out one of the abuse-of-power counts against Rick Perry, giving the former Texas governor a significant legal victory . . .
Let's stop here. That's the real story. When a defendant in a politically motivated criminal case wins a round, the newspaper should say so -- as it does -- then promptly explain the court's reasoning, then give a few grafs to the winner and his attorneys, then quote the loser, then add whatever additional perspective might be appropriate. Such as, for example, the fact that Mr. Perry is still exposed to one criminal count.
Instead, that last topic -- Mr. Perry's continuing legal and political peril -- is jacked up to the top of the inventory of topics. Here's the rest of the lede paragraph:
. . . but leaving a cloud of a criminal indictment over him as he seeks the Republican nomination for president.
For the miserable Houston Chronicle, that's the real story. Not that Mr. Perry won a battle but that he hasn't yet won the war. By paragraph, here are snips and summaries of the Chronicle's politicized and journalistically and morally challenged view of how to cover this story.
Paragraph 2. "The fact that a charge remains does not help the former governor." This should have been a description of the thrown-out charge. And while it is dog-bites-man to say that having a remaining charge "does not help the former governor" (duh), the real story is that having one charge thrown out does help the former governor. That, dear Ms. Fikac and dear editors, is the political angle to this story. But the political angle is and should be subsidiary, in this story, to the legal angle.
Paragraph 3. Political scientist Mark Jones: "He still faces a potential trial for abuse of official capacity." This should have been an explanation of why the court threw out the charge. Instead, the piling on continues.
Paragraph 4. "Perry's lawyers were considerably less restrained." The Perry response could have come before or after the background information. Here it is introduced with a snippy tone, designed to characterize their statement (by its alleged lack of restraint) before it is reported and designed to create a context to show readers that Perry's lawyers are, in some sense, deluded.
Paragraph 5. "'One down, one to go,' Perry lawyer Anthony Buzbee said Friday, predicting a solid win at the next level of appeals." Mr. Buzbee than goes on to say that "this" -- whatever "this" may refer to (the thrown-out charge? the remaining charge? something else?) "will have no impact" on Mr. Perry's presidential campaign. Furthermore, the paragraph jumps after five words to Page A4, guaranteeing that material favorable to Mr. Perry will not be seen by casual readers.
Paragraphs 6 and 7. Having exhausted itself giving Perry's side a couple of sentences, the Chronicle then resumes its piling on. These remarkable paragraphs are so absurd in their content and so woefully misplaced in the story that they deserve quoting in full:
Special prosecutor Michael McCrum took issue with Buzbee's "one down, one to go" statement, calling it "flippant" and "disrespectful" to the grand jury that indicted Perry.
"It's not high school football playoffs," he said. "The court has found that he should proceed to trial for a crime he has allegedly committed while in office."
If Mr. Buzbee is "flippant" and "disrespectful" for celebrating a legal victory over a prosecutor and grand jury who got the law wrong, what might we say about a prosecutor's possibly "flippant" and "disrespectful" attitude toward he rule of law, in pushing a legal theory that could not survive a pre-trial appeal?
Time demands that I move on from this blog post to real life, but here's a quick review of the rest of the story: Paragraph 8 (given to Mr. McCrum, the loser, whose quotes vastly outnumber those of the winner's side); Paragraph 9 (the same: all McCrum all the time); Paragraph 10 (at long last, background information on the case); Paragraph 11 (procedural history, introduced with this snide comment: "After repeatedly failing to get the two-count indictment dismissed . . . ."); Paragraph 12 (a summary of the appeals court's reasoning about the charge that was not dismissed, not about the charge that was dismissed) . . .
I'll interrupt myself here to say that in an appallingly bad and dishonest piece of journalism, it's hard to top Paragraph 12. Moving on.
. . . Paragraph 13 (at long last, the court's reasoning on why Perry won dismissal of one charge, a paragraph that belonged on page one); Paragraph 14 (Perry can still appeal the one remaining charge, also worthy of higher placement in the story); Paragraph 15 (more procedural stuff); Paragraph 16 (McCrum's [!] characterization of the remaining charge); Paragraph 17 (Perry's lawyer quoted a second time, finally stating the essence of Mr. Perry's defense ("[It] raises the question of whether the exercise of a veto can ever be illegal in the absence of bribery.") Good question, one the Chronicle should bother itself to answer on the editorial page.); Paragraph 18 (more, woefully overdue, from Perry's lawyer); Paragraph 19 (the Good Guy, McCrum, again, defending the remaining count); Paragraph 20 (more McCrum); Paragraph 21 (more McCrum); Paragraph 22 (background on Perry's characterization of his actions, overdue); Paragraph 23 (the story finally gets around, way overdue, to the arrest of the Travis County D.A. for drunken driving); Paragraph 24 (background); Paragraph 25 (how a progressive political group ("an Austin-based government watchdog," according to the Chronicle) complained about Governor Perry and set in motion the witch hunt (my words) that led to the indictments); Paragraph 26 ("Perry and his supporters have suggested the case was politically motivated." Really? Ya think?); Paragraph 27 (quotation from a pro-Perry political group, not honored by the Chronicle as a "government watchdog"); Paragraph 28 (more, finally, from a pro-Perry commentator); Paragraphs 29 and 30 (background on how the Travis County District Attorney's office has been stripped of its power to conduct similar witch hunts (my words) in the future).
On this story, the Chronicle performed -- as Glenn Reynolds often puts it -- as Democratic operatives with a by-line. The story violated elementary principles of traditional journalism. It was dishonest. Shame yet again on the Houston Chronicle.
Comments