Dole Assails Media Coverage of Campaign

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas savaged the media for coverage of his presidential campaign today, charging reporters reveled in “gossip and nit-picking” and ignored the issues.

Dole, who dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination after a string of defeats at the hands of Vice President George Bush, also charged the press covering presidential politics is slanted in favor of the Democrats and views events through “liberal-colored glasses.”

“Something is out of whack, and something is disturbingly unfair, when news coverage becomes so slanted and the issues get lost in the daily hype,” Dole said.

In a brief Senate speech, Dole said the reporters who traveled with him aboard his chartered jet “became each other’s best audience. It was an ultra-insider’s game of gossip and nit-picking that turned presidential news coverage into ‘trivial pursuits.’ ”

Daily Spin From ‘Experts’

“It was a daily spin from the ‘experts’ on the state of the campaign, whether it came from a reporter who had been on board for one month, or one stop,” he said. “Preconceived notions, prewritten stories and premeditated cliches were all confirmed regardless of the facts. And if there was a nice soap opera campaign story out there, it would be kept on the spin cycle for a good week or so.

“All the while, reporters’ necks were craned in the rear of the plane, scanning the campaign staff up front for smiles or frowns or seating arrangements that would somehow reveal the inside story,” he said. “Meanwhile, the issues disappeared somewhere over the Iowa airspace.”

Mistakes Admitted

Dole conceded he made mistakes during the campaign, in which he won the Iowa and Minnesota caucuses and the South Dakota primary but was shut out on Super Tuesday and subsequent primaries and shut down his campaign March 29, throwing his support to Bush.

The Senate Republican leader said, however, that he was “never wrong or mistaken on the issues” and never “short of the time and energy to talk about them--on or off the plane.”

“I just wished I was hounded on the federal deficit as I was on my staff,” he said. “I just wish I was interrogated about American agriculture as I was about fund-raising. I just wish my voting record were as thoroughly scrutinized as were my wife’s personal finances.

“It was my loss, but more so the American voters.”