Kerry picks his moment: a short course in how politicians manipulate the media

You probably know by now that Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry named his running mate this week and that, contrary to a banner headline in the New York Post, it isn’t Richard Gephardt.

What you may not know is how carefully political candidates orchestrate such an announcement. In this case, it was virtually textbook.

For starters, Kerry chose a day when public interest in the news was likely to be high. Having been away for the holiday weekend or distracted by the festivities, many Americans were feeling a need to reconnect with the news.

Kerry’s timing was also optimum for the day’s news cycle. The senator’s 9 a.m. announcement might seem too late for the workday crowd, but the July 4 week probably the most popular week for vacationers, many of whom sleep in. (I’m betting the office crowd soon heard the news from the Internet or the radio.)

Getting the story out early in the day assured that, barring a disaster, it would lead the noon, evening, and late newscasts. Granted, as afternoon editions are a thing of the past, newspapers couldn’t print the story until the next day, but hardly anyone gets breaking news from the paper anymore.

Kerry also appears to have taken pains to prevent the news from leaking early by withholding it even from his likely candidates. Veteran reporter Andrea Mitchell, who broke the story around 7:30 Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, said she felt confident by 10:15 Monday that Edwards would be Kerry’s choice. Mitchell claimed to have a source about whom she was “absolutely confident” and later told Gail Shister of the Philadelphia Inquirer she only held the story because she knew Kerry hadn’t contacted his top contenders yet and feared he might change his mind.

As Shister reports, it was also Mitchell who broke the news in 1988 that former president George H.W. Bush would run with Dan Quayle after she learned that Bush had notified his short-list candidates. Said Mitchell of her delay with the Edwards story, “We weren’t as invested in being first as being right.” (The New York Post should take note.)

In addition, Kerry wisely put John Edwards in the air en route to the Pennsylvania press conference at virtually the last minute. As Mitchell broke the story, Edwards and his family prepared to leave Washington. Had Edwards traveled to Pennsylvania the night before, with political reporters nationwide watching the travel plans of the short-list candidates, he and Kerry might have been scooped by speculation.

And was it merely Kerry’s good fortune that a reporter for the network with the most popular morning show (“Today”) broke his big story? Some pundits suspect a deliberate leak in Mitchell’s direction. Whether or not the break was orchestrated, Kerry benefits. (And frankly, whoever broke it, everyone would have echoed it quickly. The Boston Globe reported that within 11 minutes of Mitchell’s story airing, Kerry’s decision was reported by ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox.)

So in an atmosphere of considerable suspense that had been building in newsrooms over the weekend, John Kerry got a big announcement broken by a veteran reporter on the most popular program at the beginning of a news cycle.

On Wednesday, Kerry and Edwards made some joint campaign appearances in battleground states, thus keeping the story in the news cycle for a second day. And Sunday (July 11), they’re scheduled to appear together on the highly respected and widely watched “60 Minutes.”

If the Kerry-Edwards train got out of the station with deliberate momentum, the Bush re-election campaign had a calculated plan to slow it. By the time of Kerry’s press conference Tuesday, Bush’s campaign workers were prepared to release an ad featuring John McCain, previously rumored to be Kerry’s leading candidate. The ad implies that Edwards was an inferior choice.

Once you know how deliberately politicians use the media, you may view a lot of political news with a skeptical eye. Some suspected that the lead story on news broadcasts Thursday evening (July 8) -- a warning of a suspected terrorist attack before the November election -- was the Bush White House’s desperate attempt to reclaim the media spotlight.

One participant in an online discussion forum on the Poynter Institute’s web site even raised the question of whether the New York Post’s flub wasn’t a flub after all. It is suspicious that the story ran with neither a writer nor a source named, and the Poynter participant theorized that the Post (which, like Bush-friendly Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch) published the Gephardt story on purpose, hoping to suggest that the Missouri congressman was the logical choice.

Of course, the “Kerry picks Gephardt” issue also became an instant collector’s item. By the end of the week, copies were selling on eBay for $10-15, with bids driving some over $50.

One additional interesting detail about the timing of the Kerry announcement: it came on George W. Bush’s 58th birthday.