Cindy Sheehan, manipulatrix?

Cindy Sheehan is the woman who has made camp up the road from the Texas White House, the President’s ranch near Crawford, Texas, insisting on an audience with President Bush about the Iraq war, where her son was killed.

National Public Radio did a story on Sheehan, in which it described her as "unsophisticated." This brought a response from an NPR listener, who objected to the word "unsophisticated." It did not apply, he said, to a woman who was as skilled as Cindy Sheehan at manipulating the media.

I object to the word "manipulating," in its suggestion that Sheehan, in her supposed sophistication, used some specific manipulative skill, knowledge or tricks to get the media to do her bidding.

What was the media supposed to do? Suppose I am the editor of the Crawford Daily Paralyzer, and I get a phone call from a farmer on the way into Crawford with a load of hogs when he sees Sheehan on the first day, setting up her camp on the side of the road.

"Say," he says to me. "There’s a woman out here, down the road about a mile from Bush’s place, pitched a tent, some signs up about her being the mother of a guy killed in Iraq and she says she’s going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her about it."

As the Daily Paralyzer editor, and a seasoned journalist, I am always going to have one of two reactions to any such telephone call as that (and believe me, they come into newsrooms all the time). I am either going to say, "Well, thanks for the call, but it doesn’t sound like a story to me," or, "I’ll have a reporter check it out."

So I listen, and I think: dead soldier’s mom camped out on the caliche, must be 100 degrees outside and severe thunderstorms in the forecast, and she says she is going to stay there until Bush comes out and talks to her. Classic David and Goliath story. So I say: "I’ll have a reporter check it out."

Should I feel manipulated? If somebody called and said, "There’s a lot of people staring at the water tower, say they sure do see a likeness of the Virgin Mary there," should I feel manipulated when I holler at a reporter to go check it out?

Then it’s up to the reporter to go out and get the facts, bring them back and write the story. When I read the story, if there’s something about it that doesn’t sound right, I won’t run it. I’ll give it back to the reporter to go get whatever information the story needs. As the by God editor of The Crawford Daily Paralyzer, I am not going to be manipulated by some media hound, I can tell you that.

Media editors make these kinds of decisions every day, all day long. It is possible that Cindy Sheehan prepared press releases and sent them to the Crawford and Waco papers. Is that manipulation? When I hand the press release to a reporter and say, "Go check it out," should I feel manipulated? Here we have a dead soldier’s mom camping on a Texas road in Texas summer weather waiting to talk to the President of the United States, and I don’t go check that out?

So I check it out, publish the story, the Waco stringer in Crawford reads it, the Waco paper picks it up, and the television news, and pretty soon NPR is sitting on the caliche, nervously watching the thunderstorms approaching, and talking to Cindy Sheehan. Is she sophisticated? Unsophisticated? A manipulatrix?
It really doesn’t matter. She isn’t the story. Her dead son is, the war in Iraq is, and the President is. Cindy Sheehan is such a small part of the story that she would give anything not to be there.