How will George W. Bush be remembered outside the Washington Beltway? Last week, we joined forces with
Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin to find some of the best news and opinion on the
Bush Legacy -- as covered by
local and
international publications reporting from
outside Washington, D.C.
Here are our findings about this News Hunt for good journalism about the Bush Legacy: Beyond the Beltway.
AnalysisFor this News Hunt, our community reviewed more than 250 stories on the
Bush
Administration. From January 5 to 12, 2009, at Dan's request, we focused our search on local and international views of President Bush, published in the last 30 days. Altogether, we found over 100 stories from "outside the Beltway." From this group, 64 stories received a NewsTrust rating, with three or more member
reviews. Our top stories are featured below, and more are listed on our
Bush Legacy topic page.
Here's how all Bush-related stories break down between news and opinion -- for mainstream and independent sources -- and how Bush Legacy stories breakdown by publication scope:
Note: we used strict terms to categorize Bush Legacy stories from "beyond the Beltway:" if a reporter was a known Washington correspondent, or if the story was filed from Washington, we did not include it in this listing. All other stories about the Bush legacy were included, as long as they were from outside Washington.
As
shown above, opinion far outpaced news in local sources, and to a
lesser extent in national sources reporting from outside the Beltway.
The international sources we reviewed contained a more even balance of
news and opinion.
Stories from local sources made up nearly
half of the Bush Legacy news and opinion we reviewed, but received
significantly lower ratings than stories from international sources.
Local Bush Legacy stories received an average rating of 3.4. International Bush Legacy stories, on the other hand,
averaged 3.7.
Even though they were discussing an
American president, international stories ranked higher. We attribute
this in part to the higher profile and overall reputation of many of
the international sources we drew from. These included the BBC, The
Guardian and Asia Times, which are reviewed regularly on NewsTrust;
many of the local sources we tapped were being reviewed for the first
time.
By our own observations, most of the journalism we
reviewed on the Bush Legacy viewed the outgoing president unfavorably.
While this may be colored by a liberal slant among some of our reviewers, we find it to be consistent with the low approval ratings --
currently at about 30 percent
-- that Bush leaves office with. By and large, these stories touched on
the issues popular among Bush's detractors -- including the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the September 11 attacks, the 2000 election,
foreign policy, torture, and the current economic downturn. (See
'Inauspicious beginning, inglorious end,' 'Time to help Bush write his legacy,' 'President Bush's legacy.')
In
general, however, these stories did not make it into our lists of
highly rated news and opinion. A testament to the judgment of many of
our members, stories that focused on a single issue -- or took a more
nuanced view of the Bush legacy altogether -- ranked higher than those
that were more generic in their criticism.
In
'The Afghan Scam,'
one of our top rated pieces of international news, author Ann Jones
reported on failed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan under Bush,
and warns that president-elect Barack Obama's approach may be equally
unsuccessful. The Press and Sun Bulletin (of Brighamton, New York)
examined the mixed views of Bush's education legacy, specifically his
No Child Left Behind initiative, in
a favorably rated news analysis. And in one of our top opinions,
'Foreshadowing the Bush legacy on coal,' former NewsTrust staffer Beth Wellington elaborates on the damage Bush's energy policy has brought to Appalachian region.
Not
all our top stories were overtly critical of Bush, however. Some argued it is
too early to draw sweeping conclusions about his presidency, and others
even praised some aspects of his leadership.
An opinion in the Buffalo News
made the case that many criticisms of the Bush Administration are
premature, saying that it could take a generation or more for
historians to gain a full perspective of Bush's legacy. A
special report from the Florida Times-Union
went farther, interviewing a collection of Jacksonville voters who
remain among Bush's strongest supporters -- history will serve him
well, they maintain. And Bush received some
applause, if reluctantly, for his decision to
preserve some 200,000 square miles of seascapes, a story covered well by the Christian Science Monitor.
Overall, this News Hunt on the Bush Legacy was an educational experience for us. It challenged us
to go beyond the publications we read regularly and discover new voices outside the
beltway. Many of the stories we found were informative, original and
insightful -- and the diversity of viewpoints helped broaden our
perspective, by helping us see how local and international sources view
the Bush Legacy.
Top Stories on the Bush Legacy -- Outside the BeltwayHere is a sampling of the top rated news and opinion we found on the Bush Legacy, from sources
outside Washington:
National *
*
Note that the 'national' sources above were reporting from 'outside the
beltway' -- not from Washington bureaus, to the best of our knowledge.
National
Top Stories on the Bush Administration - Inside the BeltwayAnd here are our top stories on the
Bush Administration, covered from
within the Washington Beltway:
Thanks to our partners and reviewersIt's
been a real pleasure to work with our partners at Washington Post,
especially Jim Brady, Dan Froomkin, Hal Straus, and the rest of the
WashingtonPost.com community. We thank them all for making this project
possible, and look forward to doing more together soon.
And
we're very grateful to our NewsTrust hosts
Marsha Iverson and
Walter Cox. Once again, these two valued NewsTrust editors rose
to the occasion and helped make this News Hunt a success -- thank you
both!
Marsha
Iverson remarked on the difficulty of finding "beyond the Beltway"
coverage, and how she hopes it will benefit our news consumption and
dialogue on this topic:
The Bush Legacy News Hunt
posed interesting challenges. Foremost among them was the task of
finding "outside" voices and local opinions. Getting beyond the usual
suspects took substantial effort, and many times even a media resource
on the far end of the planet was running a story from an "inside the
Beltway" journalist. Nearly as challenging: finding a range of
viewpoints from equally articulate writers. I sense a diminished
ability--or at least inclination--for civilized discourse between
people holding opposing views. I hope readers find the compilations
and reviews in NewsTrust a starting place for conversations--respectful
conversations--that will lead toward understanding and constructive
change. My third and persistent challenge was to live up to the better
of my own aspirations and curb my inclination toward snarky remarks and
hyperbole. Our partnership with Dan Froomkin and the Washington Post
definitely helped me keep focused and aim for the highest quality in
postings and reviews.
And co-host Walter Cox, who has always advocated that a broad range of political viewpoints be reviewed on NewsTrust, commented:
I
have learned a tremendous amount about Bush this past week from the
selections that have appeared, and I think NewsTrust has transcended
its more comfortable anti-Bush stance in order to make this possible.
Kudos to staff and contributors!
Many thanks as well to our many reviewers, including our most active contributors:
Dale Penn,
Michael Bugeja, Mike LaBonte and
Kristin Gorski Over 200 reviewers participated in this Bush Legacy News Hunt, and over 100 of them were new reviewers. Good for you!
To
these hundred new reviewers who joined us this week, welcome aboard! We
look forward to a very productive year with you all. If
you have any questions or comments about this News Hunt or NewsTrust in
general, please post them on our
feedback page.
This week we're partnering with Link TV to focus on the
war in Gaza.
Can you help us find the best journalism on the conflict between Israel
and Palestine -- and its impact on world politics? From Monday, January 12 to Sunday, January 18, 2009, we're looking for unique perspectives from independent sources in the
US and abroad -- not just mainstream media reports.
For this News Hunt, we're joining forces with Link TV viewers, led by
Middle East program director Jamal Dajani -- as well as NewsTrust hosts
Mike LaBonte and Marsha Iverson.
Help us submit and review original
news and opinion about this crisis on our special
Gaza topic page.
-- By Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala
(UPDATED WITH NEW GRAPH ON 1/15/09)
