The Counter-deception Blog

Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/kurtzhoward/] about (1) the centrality of the “deception issue” in this election, compared to recent elections (e.g., Clinton was about Clinton’s personal dishonesty; this election is now about a RedTruth vs BlueTruth reality gap dividing the American public); and (2) the notable, if belated, improvement in the remarkably weak counter-deception skills of the working media (remarkable given what they teach in journalism schools).
Both trends are very much center stage now, for example, in the Rose Garden (as well as Rather’s CBS-MemoGate blunders).
Note below the repeated use counter-deception techniques in recent press questioning – particularly contrasting campaign assertions with contrary evidence, and Zola’s “I accuse” technique…

The New Republic's Ryan Lizza, eyeing the upbeat spin on Iraq from Bush and Ayad Allawi, says the reporters' questions at their presser reflect Kerry's effort to "point out the gap between Bush's rhetoric on Iraq and the reality on the ground there. Thursday's press conference showed how successful Kerry has been in making the 'reality gap' a central narrative of the campaign. There were nine questions, and seven of them were about chaos in Iraq:
"--Mr. President, two more Americans have been beheaded. More than 300 Iraqis have been killed in the last week. Fallujah is out of government control. And U.S. and Iraqi forces have been unable to bring security to diplomatic and commercial centers of Baghdad. Why haven't U.S. forces been able to capture or kill al Zarqawi, who's blamed for much of the violence?
"--Mr. President, John Kerry is accusing you of colossal failures of judgment in Iraq and having failed to level with the American people about how tough it is there. How do you respond to him?
"--Mr. President, you say today that the work in Iraq is tough and will remain tough. And, yet, you travel this country and a central theme of your campaign is that America is safer because of the invasion of Iraq. Can you understand why Americans may not believe you?
"--Sir, may I just follow, because I don't think you're really answering the question. I mean, I think you're responding to Senator Kerry, but there are beheadings regularly, the insurgent violence continues, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. My question is, can you understand that Americans may not believe you when you say that America is actually safer today?
"--Sir, I'd like you [to] answer Senator Kerry and other critics who accuse you of hypocrisy or opportunism when, on the one hand, you put so much stock in the CIA when it said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and now say it is just guessing when it paints a pessimistic picture of the political transition.
"--You have been accused on the campaign trail in this election year of painting an overly optimistic portrait of the situation on the ground in Iraq. Yesterday, in Valley Forge, you said that there was a 'handful' of people who were willing to kill to try to disrupt the process. Isn't that really understating the case, particularly when there are intelligence reports that hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign fighters are streaming across the border from Syria to take up the fight of the insurgency?
"--Don't the real voices of the Iraqi people, themselves, contradict the rosy scenarios you're painting here today?"