Gawker's Alex Pareene picked this up admirably yesterday, but it's worth noting again (and again and again, actually): In yesterday's review of MSNBC's primary night coverage, Alessandra Stanley made one huge, glaring error that proved to anyone even casually watching the coverage that she had no credibility on the matter, at all. The error was this: Attributing the slogan "the best political team on television" to MSNBC and not CNN, where that slogan is shoehorned into pretty much every segment, debate, pre-commercial sign-off and available chyron. It is a constant refrain, one which I find I can't read without hearing Wolf Blitzer's voice awkwardly intoning it in my head. It's not just me: See Jack Shafer's "The Best Political Team on Television"? On election night, CNN runs its preposterous slogan into the ground," wherein he points out that the phrase was used over 50 times on the day of the New Hampshire primaries. Which was three CNN debates, one Super Tuesday and umpteen hours of coverage ago. The slogan is so well-known that it's been aped consciously by both networks, by Fox's Brit Hume who called his group "The best political team EVER," and yes, by MSNBC, which briefly ran a promo describing "the best political team on cable" and has used the term recently, tongue firmly in cheek. A regular watcher would not have been fooled; a careless, inattentive, irregular watcher — evidently.
MSNBC calls itself "The Place for Politics," and its anchors sign off with that before commercial breaks and watchers can see it in the background on flatscreens and emblazoned across the screen in various other ways. It's been a long, intense and exciting political campaign and this is the kind of branding that the networks are not exactly subtle about. The combination of the two — being bashed over the head by slogans during extended time spent watching the coverage — is why Stanley's error is so egregious, and fairly leaps off the page at the reader who is even remotely familiar with this stuff.
Gawker's Pareene, who was previously at Wonkette, conveyed it this way: "Does Ms. Stanley own a TV? Or have an editor?" It does bear asking. Look, I get that Alessandra Stanley is the NYT TV critic, and that it's impossible to watch everything all the time, and that sometimes, inevitably, the twain shall meet. So, even though you'd think that familiarity with primary coverage would be a prerequisite for critiquing that coverage, where it is absent you would also think that it would be prudent to make sure it was vetted by an educated pair of eyes. An error like this stands out even more at the NYT, given the massive resources it has dedicated to political coverage, never mind the hours Kit Seelye has spent liveblogging the debates and primaries. I mean, come on — run it past Brian Stelter, for God's sake. This is the sort of error that renders everything else in the column moot — because if she can't even get this right, how can we trust that she's right on anything else?
It's not like this is a one-time occurrence, either. By now whatever critical savvy Alessandra Stanley brings to her work has long been overshadowed by her reputation for making repeated, careless errors in her columns (see: Reference Tone, Gawker, me across two websites). There is no shortage of glaring examples here, from referring to Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" as "trustiness" and hit show Everybody Loves Raymond as All About Raymond; or saying that Anderson Cooper had conducted an interview when in fact it was done by Ryan Seacrest standing in for him. Given that notoriety — and notice! — it's surprising that the NYT would permit itself to be in the position to be called out yet again on one of her gaffes. In a political season where so much attention has been lavished on this race, you have to stay ahead of your readers — or at least know as much as them. That is, if you want to remain the most trusted name in news.
The Worst Fact-Checking Team In Newspapers [Gawker]
Instead of Men Behaving Badly, MSNBC Strains for a Polite Primary Night [NYT]
Related:
"The Best Political Team on Television"? On election night, CNN runs its preposterous slogan into the ground [Slate]
Hey, CNN, give "best political team on television" a rest [Orlando Sentinel]
"CNN is famous for saying 'The best political team on television'" [FishbowlDC]
"I like Wolf... I just really can't bear to hear him talk about the Best Political Team on Television." [HuffPo]