Posted 12:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

Coulter’s Media Conspiracy. Part I

According to Ann Coulter in Slander, the media were out to get Ronald Reagan with the age issue in 1984. Coulter writes:

More peculiarly, [in 1984] a spate of general-interest articles on senility began to pop up in large-circulation magazines. In the ten months before the 1984 election, Newsweek, Time, Ladies Home Journal, and U.S. News & World Report all ran major pieces on senility. That’s too many to be a coincidence. The LexisNexis archives yield only one magazine article on senility (U.S. News & World Report) in 1976; zero in 1980; zero in 1988; zero in 1992; one in 1996; and one in 2000 (Maclean’s). In other words, the same number of magazine articles on senility were published in 1984 alone as in all other presidential elections years combined in the last quarter of the twentieth century. (p. 132).

I found some serious problems with the supposed spike in articles on senility in 1984. This hardly surprised me--clicker here to see some problems with a previous media content-analysis done by Coulter. The Ladies Home Journal article from 1984 Coulter cited (Emma Elliot, “My Name is Mrs. Simon,” August 1984) wasn’t about senility per se; rather it was a woman’s narrative of her ordeal with hospital staff when her elderly mother was hospitalized for a physical ailment. The subject of senility was touched upon when the author complained that hospital staff treated her mother as if she senile simply because she was elderly. If this was an attempt by the media to make the “age issue” salient, then I don’t know why it would include the following information:

As a medical writer, I was appalled at the way this hospital’s trained professionals were treating their elderly patients. They, of all people, should be aware that “old age” and “senility” are not interchangeable terms. In fact, only 5 percent of older people ever suffer from severe intellectual impairment. Fifteen percent may suffer some mild disability, such as minor memory loss. But 80 percent of those who live to very old age, into their eighties and nineties, never experience any symptoms of senility at all.

The U.S. News article Coulter cited (“Today’s Senior Citizens: ‘Pioneers of New Golden Era,’” July 2, 1984) also is not specifically on senility; rather it is an interview with a gerontologist on geriatrics in general. The article did touch upon senility and Alzheimer’s disease but the doctor they interviewed used President Reagan as an example of adjusting well to the aging process: “[Ronald Reagan] seems to love his job. He feels very much in command and derives much stimulation and satisfaction from being President.” The overall attitude of the doctor interviewed was that overall quality of life is improving for America’s elderly; according to the doctor: “The elderly today are healthier, happier, richer, better educated, and more independent than they were at the turn of the century.” If the editors of U.S. News were attempting to use the interview to put then-President Reagan in a bad light, they failed miserably.

The articles from Time (Evan Thomas, “Questions of Age and Competence; The President Seem Fit—But Is He too Detached, 10/22/84) and Newsweek (Matt Clark, “The Doctors Examine Age, “ 10/22/84) Coulter cited also were not “general-interest articles” but specifically addressed questions raised by Reagan’s disastrous first debate with Walter Mondale. During that debate, at times Reagan seemed confused (Reagan said "I'm all confused now." as he prepared to deliver his closing statement). These two articles made the questionable assumption that Reagan was mentally fit. For instance, in the Time article by Evan Thomas concluded: "In sum, the issues Americans should debate is not Reagan's age but his effectiveness and the validity of his approach to governing." In the final paragraph of the Newsweek article, Matt Clark wrote: "Doctors see no reason why a man Reagan's age shouldn't be president. They cite Winston Churchill, among others, as an impressive precedent. And, they point out, decision makers often suffer less stress than the younger people who execute their edicts. "There's no reason a priori why someone in his 70s may not be just the person we need, " says [geriatric specialist, Dr. Marilyn] Albert. "Sometimes, those very people have the accumulated wisdom, knowledge, and expertise to deal wisely with complex knowledge."

The Time and Newsweek articles fly in the face of what was going on in the Reagan White House. When Howard Baker took over as chief of staff in 1987, Reagan's staff told him to be prepared to have Reagan declared unfit and replace him. In fact, there is evidence that people in the media covered for Reagan in this area. As Jeff Cohen points out, “former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl writes that she and other reporters suspected that Reagan was 'sinking into senility' years before he left office. She writes that White House aides 'covered up his condition'-- and journalists chose not to pursue it." Cohen’s article gives the shocking details of an encounter Stahl had with a disoriented Reagan—yet Stahl spiked the story.

Part II: Coulter’s methodology: Coming Soon