When one of Vice President Joe Biden’s staffers shut a Florida reporter in a closet-like room to keep him from talking to people attending a Democratic fundraiser, it symbolized how the media’s status has fallen. When Biden’s spokesperson tried to explain it by claiming the reporter was merely in a holding area and making other factual errors it symbolized how spin is compulsive.
And when the blogosphere exaggerated it and Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers tried to clear up inaccuracies with details and got attacked as a Biden hack, it symbolized how some blogs are like talk radio. Why revise a narrative with facts if aimed at someone on the other side who you seek to discredit?
First, a lower-level staffer put Powers in a closet like room. Initial news headlines said he was “locked” in a closet. “Locked” and “closet” disappeared in later stories. A Biden spokesperson tried to apologize, claiming Powers was in a holding area and also got another fact wrong.
If former Vice President Dick Cheney had stuffed a journalist in a small room to keep him from talking to fundraiser guests, it would have been called a major assault on press freedom.
Probably the main difference is that Cheney would never have let the reporter out. Or he would have taken him hunting.
You know the kinds of jokes you’ll hear from comedians now. Something like:
Joe Biden’s staff kept a reporter in a closet to keep him from talking to people at a fundraiser. This wasn’t the first time a reporter came out of the closet. What’s the big deal? A lot of the White House press corps are hangers on. A staffer issued an apology that created controversy. The staffer’s statement was to an apology what Donald Trump’s comb-over is to hair.
This came amid must-do media stories. First, former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman Vice Presidential nominee of a major party, died. Then former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered a series of craven flip flops on Libya and insisted his divorce and deposition helped give him vital experience to lead the Bill Clinton impeachment. Ferraro shattered the glass ceiling. Gingrich shattered his glass house.
Powers wrote about blog coverage: “I was kidnapped. That was news to me. My paper and I conspired to cover this up, to protect Vice President Joe Biden and his staff from charges they had imprisoned me at a fundraiser last week. That was news to me too. In fact, a lot of details circulating through the blogosphere — and into some mainstream media — about my coverage of Biden’s fundraising visit to a Winter Park home last Wednesday were news to me.”
The lessons?
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Joe 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.