REUTERS AND THE FRAME GAME
President Bush, in his interview with Diane Sawyer tonight on ABC, said the following about gay marriage:
"If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that."However, he also said, "The position of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to make, so long as it's embraced by the state or at the state level."
He said marriage should be a state issue, "except and unless judicial rulings undermine the sanctity of marriage. In which case, we may need a constitutional amendment."
Reuters' Randall Mikkelsen follows up those comments with this:
His comments indicated that Bush, as he heads into his reelection campaign, was walking a fine line between the interests of his social conservative base which favors a constitutional ban on gay marriage and other voters who have shown more acceptance of same-sex unions.
That is slippery writing. While it's true that social conservatives are most supportive of a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, posing us against "other voters who have shown more acceptance" of it is a red herring--a majority of the country opposes gay marriage. Are social cons the majority? No, we represent somewhere around a quarter to more than a third of the voting public, but our position on gay marriage is the majority's position--against it. The difference between social cons and everyone else who opposes gay marriage is one of degree--we support an amendment, others may or may not, but we agree on the basic position of opposition to gay marriage.
Reuters' comment aims to portray opposition to gay marriage as confined only to the socially conservative position, thus trying to make Bush look beholden to an extreme constituency.
This is how media bias works most often. The quotes are accurate, the thesis of the story largely sound, in this case that President Bush has left open the possibility of civil unions as a state matter. But the bias against social cons and in favor of gay marriage on the writer's part allows him to introduce the wrinkle, which is not supported by the facts, that opposition to gay marriage is confined to social conservatives. That's a way to frame the issue to move undecideds who might not see gay marriage passionately one way or the other, but have a bias (probably thanks to the press) against social cons, one of the most maligned political forces in the country today.