Someone in McCain camp might take Senator John McCain aside for a little chat — or perhaps meditation. In a week when the mainstream news media is starting to pile on McCain for a growing credibility gap and when Wall Street’s national financial catastrophe has overshadowing the Sarah Palin issue(s) McCain is showing signs of being a candidate who in danger of shooting himself in the foot — with his mouth.
When a politician goes after a newsperson or anchor who asks a journalistic question so basic that a student from a journalism school could have it as part of an assignment in interviewing a politician, it means several things:
(1) The politician is feeling the heat and trying to deflect a question that is not helpful to his campaign as he tries to discredit the reporter. (2) The politician is tired and testy…something that will not help McCain if he is seen as brittle in public at a time when he is under fire for ads that are less-than-truthful. (3) He either has handlers who are not doing their work or they’re underestimating how actively going after reporters can stiffen the resolve of news and morning show editors editors, reporters to ensure that the candidate will be asked the tough questions that are “out there”).
Watch John McCain go after MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinksi after she asks a basic question that McCain and his advisers should have anticipated so he could rattle off a response and just let it go. Note the response from others on the show. McCain supporters who think the media is all evil — and not all McCain supporters do — will cheer this, but the lingering image to those not actively working for the McCain campaign is of a fake-ly smiling McCain unable to control his emotions and trying to discredit a reporter as an “Obama supporter” because she dared to ask a hard question. A testy versus tough guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwkrmn6bAlsJoe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.