Category Archives: media

I wouldn’t care, except this blogger blogs at the San Antonio Express-News, that’s the big newspaper reporting in the district in question, and her post offers no evidence that she has a clue what’s at the heart of that Ciro Rodriguez video from last week.  You know the one I’m talking about – Ciro Gone WILD.

Now, to blogger Maria Anglin’s objections:

Let’s talk about this video of Ciro blowing his top with some woman at a town hall meeting last week. Ciro doesn’t look too cool and collected while he’s losing his temper, does he? No sir, he doesn’t. Now a video of Ciro’s angry words is the first thing that pops up on cansecoforcongress.com under the header “Ciro Rodriguez: Out-Of-Control.” Does that look good? No sir, that doesn’t either.

Ciro, thanks for apologizing. Being called a liar is a punch in the gut, but it’s part of being a politician and you ought to know how to react to that kind of stuff by now. You’re no rookie; you know that. And it appears that you now realize that there is no way to take back the moral high ground once you start pounding on the tables with a newspaper to show everyone how upset you are. It’s a safe bet that everyone in the room knew you were madder than a wet hen, and that’s not your best side. You probably shouldn’t point fingers at other adults to make your point, either — it doesn’t go over well.

And Francisco “Quico” Canseco. Do you really want to lead your Web site with this? Wouldn’t it be better to lead with your take on the issues you believe are the most critical for the 23rd Congressional District, as your note posted right under the Ciro video says? If you’re leading with a fistful of “look how badthis clown looks,” what does that say about your position?

What we have here is a blogger’s failure to understand what she’s seeing.  The Ciro Gone WILD video is serious, on its own, for two reasons, and the Canseco campaign is more than justified in making a big deal out of it.  First, the video demonstrates clearly that Ciro Rodriguez doesn’t understand the bill that he voted for.  He tries citing the government’s numbers on that bill, and his own constituent calls him out for using dated figures – figures that are no longer in operation, according to the very government Rodriguez is relying on for authority here.  Rodriguez’s reaction shows that he’s operating from talking points that his party or maybe someone on his staff wrote for him (just a guess, but the talking points’ author is probably somewhere within Obama’s personal political army, Organizing for America) and he doesn’t know what to do when those talking points get blown up in front of a room full of people whose votes he’s trying to get.  So he lashes out, and looks like a menacing jerk in the process.

All of that is serious.  You want bullet points, here are a few.

1. Dem Rep Ciro Rodriguez doesn’t know what the hell he voted for or what it will cost, so

2. He relied on talking points rather than having any real understanding of the bill (which is his job, by the way), and

3. When those talking points are proven to be useless,

4. Ciro Rodriguez chooses to lash out rather than admit his shortcomings and his error in voting for that bill.

All that seems pretty clear to me.  Let’s hope it sinks in on Ciro’s defender over at the Express-News.

I’m only posting this as a study in framing.  Today we’ve had a video clip from Texas Democrat Rep. Ciro Rodriguez go totally viral – it got front paged on Drudge, went high up on the big blogs, it was pretty much everywhere – outside the state of Texas.

Within the state, there’s a relatively new online news source that at least bills itself as nonbiased, fact-based, etc.  It’s called the Texas Tribune.  I kept an eye on them throughout the day to see if, and how, they might cover the Rodriguez video.

The Trib took a while, but when they finally got around to covering it, they didn’t fail to disappoint.  The story here – the who, what, when, where, how – is that a Congressman lost his cool under questioning by a voter.  That’s what happened.  But check out the framing in this headline from the Tribune:

Conservatives Circulate Rodriguez Town Hall Clip

Note who the actors are in that headline – not the powerful official who lost his cool and slapped a table with a newspaper.  No, the real actor here is “conservatives” for circulating the clip.  That, my friends, is Grade A biased framing at work.

Then check out the story’s tone.  It’s full of, what, ennui?  It’s as if reporter Morgan Smith drew the short straw and had to cover this icky story so she slapped something together, hit post, and ran off to scrub her hands of the taint of having to write it.

A clip of U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, in which he apparently flares up at a constituent questioning him on health care, is making the rounds in the conservative blogosphere.

The 44-second-long video appears on the site of right-wing media mogul Andrew Breitbart and purportedly shows the San Antonio Democrat at a “recent” — the post does not give the date or the origins of the video —  town hall meeting taking questions from constituents on healthcare. Urged by a woman to “tell the truth,” a visibly flustered Rodriguez slams a newspaper on a nearby table, and says, “Ma’am, don’t accuse me of not saying the truth.”

Heh.  He didn’t “say” it, he growled it – while ironically demanding civility of the woman he’d just menaced and whose table he’d intemperately slapped.  Then, the Trib posts Rodriguez’s excuse/apology as an update before getting to the actual clip.  Which is, ya know, the meat of the story.  Generally, it’s proper blog form not to update in the middle of a post, but at the end – but this update just puts that much more padding in between the reader and that awful, icky, clip that Morgan Smith clearly doesn’t want to write about.  With that structure, the Trib’s post amounts to an inverted frame built on a biased frame.

I expected better of the Trib.  Well, hoped for better anyway.  The Trib is living down to my expectations, unfortunately.