‘Half-Empty’ Facts

Memo to John Harwood, The Wall Street Journal

Re: Your Nov. 9, 2007, piece, “Poll Suggests Clinton Is Vulnerable; She Loses Points on Honesty, Ideology; Virtual Tie With Giuliani”

Is it fair to emphasize just ‘half-empty’ facts and downplay or omit positive facts in poll on Hillary Clinton?

My understanding is that the headline and the perspective of the Nov. 7 Wall Street Journal article on the latest WSJ/NBC poll was driven by the pollsters interpreting the results that Rudy Giuliani is currently in a “virtual dead heat” with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

This led to the conclusion that Sen. Clinton showed “vulnerabilities” by such a “virtual dead heat” with Giuliani because of the contrasting Democratic Party’s overall polling advantages on a variety of key issues.

That is certainly a judgment that it is possible for a pollster to make. But that led to a story that, in my judgment at least, is decidedly one-sided in its reporting, emphasizing the half-empty facts and interpretations and de-emphasizing or ignoring quite positive facts for Clinton contained in the data and indeed in the story itself.

Importantly, the fundamental assumption on which the negative slant of the story is derived — of Sen. Clinton’s “vulnerability” due to the “virtual dead heat” with Giuliani — is at least debatable. But the reader gets no reasonable alternative interpretation.

For example, you chose to quote Giuliani “slamming” Sen. Clinton, but you didn’t balance that quote with at least one counter-point quote from any one of a number of critics of Giuliani who could have offered quotes showing Giuliani’s many “vulnerabilities.”

For example, Giuliani is seen by many people, including some New York firefighters involved in post-Sept. 11 cleanup, as exaggerating his record after 9/11 at the site. Or you could have used the most recent example of Giuliani’s tendency to exaggerate or misuse statistics, such as his use of demonstrably false data in trying to prove that the current U.S. healthcare system is fine as compared to the U.K.’s, i.e., his recent statements that a U.K. citizen is more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer than an American have been proven to be false and yet he continues to repeat them. Has the Journal thought about running a big story about that, showing Giuliani’s “vulnerabilities”?

Indeed, the entirely negative “half-empty” perspective of the story seemed to drive the Journal into turning even possibly positive or ambiguous facts into clearly negative ones.

For example, the story states that “pluralities” rate Mrs. Clinton negatively on honesty, likability, and sharing their positions on the issues (leading to the subhead that “she loses points on honesty, ideology”).

I only saw the actual results on the issue of “honesty.” The poll shows Sen. Clinton’s percentages on “honesty” as 34 percent positive, 23 percent neutral, 43 percent negative. No dispute that 43 percent is a “plurality.” But you could have just as accurately written that “only 43 percent” were negative on Clinton’s honesty — while 57 percent were not (i.e., were either positive or neutral).

This statement too is accurate.

I would submit the negative way of expressing it supported the Journal‘s underlying assumption that the “dead heat” results showed “vulnerabilities,” and thus the positive way of expressing it was not considered as a valid alternative data and interpretation of them.

In addition, the 43 percent number could have been compared to the “generic” anti-Democratic vote, which most pollsters would put at about 40 percent in any election. I believe the data would show that most of these 43 percent would feel negatively about any Democrat, whether Hillary Clinton or someone else. But no quote provided that perspective.

An alternative reasonable explanation, I would argue, of why Sen. Clinton is currently in a virtual dead heat with Giuliani (other polls that you did not mention show her slightly ahead) — which you could have easily found an expert to say — is that the country remains basically split 50-50 at the presidential vote level, just as it was in 2000 and 2004. You could have stated factually that no other Democrat is doing better against Rudy than Hillary Clinton is. (The sentence high up in the story could have read, “In fact, despite Sen. Clinton being in a virtual dead heat with Rudy Giuliani, no other Democrat is even that close to him. Experts pointed out that the Clinton-Giuliani results could be more about a divided country than Mrs. Clinton’s particular political or personal vulnerabilities.”)

Another and final example is the way the story downplays, in terms of placement in the story, the incredibly good facts about Hillary Clinton’s current political standing. They are easily lost under the dominant negative headline and early lede paragraphs.

For example, the headline could have been:

“Clinton Maintains 22% Lead Over Obama, Despite Week of Unprecedented Personal Attacks by Obama and Edwards and Media Criticism of Clinton’s Oct. Debate Performance.”

That is an accurate headline — even from the facts contained in the story, albeit de-emphasized.

Or the Journal‘s headline and ledes could have accurately been consistent with the facts contained in (but buried at the end of) the story, as follows:

“Despite Dead Heat in Polls, Issues Favor Senator Clinton to Defeat Mayor Giuliani by Substantial Margin In General Election.”

Here are an alternative factually accurate lede four paragraphs supporting that headline that the Journal could have but chose not to use:

“The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll confirms that Sen. Hillary Clinton, though in a virtual dead heat with Rudy Giuliani in the current presidential contest, shows substantial upward potential to open a wide lead on Giuliani once the general election campaign heats up. At that point, all voters will learn of Hillary’s positions on the most important issues to voters — change, the economy and healthcare — as compared to Giuliani.

“For example, the poll shows that by a 71 percent-20 percent margin, the public wants the next president to take a different approach from President Bush — while Mr. Giuliani will be closely identified and on record supporting President Bush on the Iraq war and on every other major issue.

“In other words, the poll strongly suggests that Rudy Giuliani is highly vulnerable to Mrs. Clinton once general election voters focus on the fact that Sen. Clinton is on the right end — and Rudy Giulani on the short end — of the 72-20 percent margin on the critical question of change and criticism of the status quo (Clinton) versus no significant change in direction and support of the status quo (Giulani).

“Similarly, the poll also shows that by a 52 percent-34 percent margin, Americans call the economy and healthcare more important to their vote than terrorism or values. Since Mrs. Clinton is most identified with these two issues and Mayor Giuliani is not, many experts believe that Clinton could gain significant support and Giuliani could lose support, once general election voters learn — as they inevitably will at some point — that Giuliani is not handling these key issues as positively as Clinton.”

I would contend that this headline, and these four lede paragraphs, are accurate. They are just written from a different “half-full” rather than “half-empty” perspective.

At the very least, balanced journalism would have juxtaposed both positive and negative interpretations of the data.

Finally, another startlingly positive set of facts is embedded in your story — contrary to most post-debate conventional wisdom and pundit predictions. After Sen. Clinton clearly had a bad week, perhaps her worst week, after the Philadelphia debates, virtually every reporter I spoke to and read and virtually all of TV’s cable pundits (e.g., the worst case as usual, Chris Matthews) were predicting that Clinton would take a serious hit in the Democratic Party polling after the debate. (I believe on MSNBC’s “Hardball” the evening of or a day or so after the debate, Mr. Matthews breathlessly read a poll showing Obama gaining six and Hillary down six and said something like, “Remember this moment — could be a turning point.”)

So the startling and newsworthy headline summarizing the WSJ/NBC data on the Democratic race, post-debate, could have been:

“Despite Expectations, Criticisms and Personal Attacks on Clinton at Debate and After By Obama and Edwards Had No Apparent Effect on Democratic Voters.

“Clinton Still Leads Obama by 22 Percent and Edwards Continues Nosedive in Third Place with 11 Percent.”

That would have been an accurate headline too.

One of the most dramatic facts in the data, downplayed in an article focusing on the Clinton-Giuliani “virtual dead heat,” was the devastating data (to the Obama campaign, at least) explaining why Sen. Obama appears to have hit a wall in the mid-20s against Sen. Clinton, at least for now:

Only 30 percent of Americans rate him positively on having enough experience for the presidency, and just under 29 percent rate him positively on “being a good commander in chief.”

This is truly shocking — and someone at the WSJ might have actually chosen to lead with this as a serious problem for Obama, despite the hype of the last week of Obama going on personal attack strategy, despite his commitment to the “politics of hope,” as when he called Clinton “untruthful” — another word for “liar,” while Edwards got even more nasty while mischaracterizing her true positions on Social Security, Iran and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s (D) driver’s license proposal for illegal aliens; while few, if any, journalists have written about Edwards’s garbled and inconsistent answers on the Spitzer proposal on “This Week” last Sunday.

So there were many choices of different ledes, or different facts, that could have balanced the story while raising the question as to why Clinton was not defeating Mayor Giuliani by a bigger margin.

But the story did not include counter-point positive facts, but instead, even when they were included, they were downplayed or placed at the bottom of story.

Why were the editorial choices in the Journal story so negatively one-sided?

With all due respect, I believe there is a horde/pack journalism phenomenon going on now to highlight negative facts about Hillary Clinton. This is naturally a result of her being the front-runner, and perhaps for other reasons. It appears to be a double standard not applied to Giuliani or the other Democratic candidates.

(When is last time, for example, you wrote or mentioned on a TV appearance the hypocrisy of Sen. Obama’s criticizing Sen. Clinton for her September vote supporting a Senate resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a “foreign terrorist organization” — when, in fact, Obama co-sponsored S. 970 in March 2007, which used precisely the same words to make the same exact designation. Is this a double standard emerging against the front-runner? Does that make it OK?)

Please note that all these comments are written without challenging anyone’s good faith, just what I see as a series of one-sided journalistic judgments.

Mr. Davis is a supporter and fundraiser for Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign.