Critics in the media — quite a few of whom unabashedly favor Obama — have been out in force this week, pointing fingers and getting red-faced over ABC’s treatment of their favorite in the most debate. Yes, that shoe always pinches when it’s on the other foot, I’ve noticed.
At The Politico, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote:
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama….. (The Politico)
The article further acknowledges, “Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.” (The Politico) [Egalia: “Politico says Obama has a secret weapon….the media. Duh. Duh. Duh. That’s a secret if you’re deaf, dumb, and blind.”] But it’s not exactly a new trend; the media also — according to me — did its little part, all to get George W. Bush elected.
At The Fix, Chris Cillizza logged major developments in ‘the debate over the debate’:
*Moveon.org, which is supporting Obama in the primary, organized an online petition drive decrying the alleged lack of issues discussed in the debate. “Enough is enough,” read the petition in part. “The public needs the media to stop hurting the national dialogue in this important election year.”
*The Post’s own Tom Shales penned a column decrying the debate and the performance of the two ABC debate moderators. “Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition,” wrote Shales.
*Obama’s campaign used the perceived imbalance in the debate to raise money — sending out an e-mail solicitation entitled “Gotcha” and asking for $25 donations to counter the perceived bias.
*Stephanopoulos, in an interview with Politico’s Michael Calderone, defended his performance and that of his network on Wednesday night. “We asked tough but appropriate questions,” Stephanopoulos said.
*Clinton insisted the content of the debate was just fine by her and that Obama should be ready for much worse from Republicans if he winds up as the nominee. “I’m with Harry Truman on this: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Clinton said yesterday in Pennsylvania. “Just speaking for myself, I’m very comfortable in the kitchen.”
*Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei posted a piece arguing that the debate was not all that different from past set-to’s, but that the “unfair to Obama” narrative has taken hold because of the media’s willingness to buy into the Obama campaign’s spin.
And, as Harris and VandeHei snarkily remarked:
My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.
Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance? (The Politico)
The appropriate response to Obama’s media advocates, they argue, is the same response ‘the political media commentariat’ has given to complaints from Hillary’s supporters of bias in the media.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her…has been: Stop whining.
That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans…who are doing the whining. (The Politico; emphasis added)
For the record, I thought the ‘prosecutorial tone’ of the ABC debate was pretty evenly distributed. Being a Hillary supporter, I barely twitched an eyebrow when they brought up Bosnia. It’s what we’re used to, after all.
But I am fascinated that so many in the media are so indignant over ABC’s treatment of the candidate. More from Harris and VandeHei:
This is not to say that ABC’s performance was flawless. There were some weird questions (“Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?”). There were some questionable production decisions (the camera cutaways to Chelsea Clinton, the stacking of so many process questions in the first 45 minutes).
But there was nothing to justify Tom Shales’s hyperbolic review (“shoddy, despicable performances” by Gibson and Stephanopoulos) in The Washington Post or Greg Mitchell’s in Editor & Publisher (“perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years”). Others, like Time’s Michael Grunwald, likewise weighed in against ABC.
In fact, the balance of political questions (15) to policy questions (13) was more substantive than other debates this year that prompted no deluge of protests. The difference is that this time there were more hard questions for Obama than for Clinton.
Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything, they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee. (The Politico; emphasis added)
So Obama and his supporters might as well quit moaning and, um, woman up. Given the apparent eagerness of the DNC to hand the nomination to him, he’s going to have to get used to it. Once he’s up against that other media favorite, John McCain, he can expect much worse. To be electable, he’s going to have to learn to deal with media gadflies and petty, annoying questions.
The deeper questions discussed in The Politico piece have to do with the media’s barefaced advocacy of Obama—as evidenced in what the article calls “the embarrassing rush of many journalists to his side this week.” Are political journalists all turning into bloggers?
Though I realize that Obama supporters see such reportage as pure, unvarnished fact, no Clinton supporter who has been paying attention really needed this piece to point out the following four media trends:
1. The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards — favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority — were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer’s real feelings….(The Politico, pg 2)
2. The rise of the liberal echo chamber…it has only been in this campaign cycle that we have seen the liberal echo chamber — from websites like The Huffington Post and cable commentators like Keith Olbermann — be able consistently to drive a campaign story line…(The Politico, pg 2-3)
3. The blurring of lines between journalist and advocate. The Huffington Post is an admirable enterprise….But it covers politics with a mix of traditional reporters and analysts, like Tom Edsall, and with people who define themselves principally as advocates. Many of these advocates, like The Huffington Post as a whole, are proudly cheering for Obama. (The Politico, pg 3)
4. Covering politics as it is versus as it should be. Many of the people complaining about ABC’s coverage, even some Clinton supporters, disliked the questions and the tone because they felt they were serving as a warm-up act for Republican attacks in the fall. It is not an easy balance. It is not reporters’ job to promote the opposition’s story lines… But nor can serious reporters avert their gaze from the fact that questions about how well candidates connect personally and culturally with voters matter a lot — they were decisive factors in both the 2000 and 2004 elections.. In the wake of the debate, it is time for Obama’s cheerleaders in the media to ask some questions of themselves. (The Politico, pg 3; emphasis added)
My own thoughts on this are easily summed up:
(1) Thank God for BBC News; and
(2) Journalists who wish to advocate for a candidate or a cause need to abandon journalism and just get a blog. It’s wrong and misleading for a person whose job it is to report the facts to present opinions as fact or to use his or her enormous public platform as a campaign stump. A political journalist who has been swept off his or her feet should be assigned to write about something else.
At The Moderate Voice, Pete Abel mainly concurs with Harris and Vandehei:
Though I don’t agree with everything they write, I do — even as an Obama supporter — agree with their essential thesis…..[T]he media (old and new) that stake a claim on “pure journalism” — that present their writers as “pure journalists” — …must rightly operate at a different level, which is precisely why I think they’d be well served by an open, honest read of Harris’ and Vandehei’s critique.
Tennessee Guerilla Women have a video clip by scholar Deborah Tannen on the Hillary double-bind that is well worth a look, as well as a bit of feedback for The Politico itself:
Politico says Clinton scorns the base, by which they mean, Hillary criticized MoveOn for flooding the caucuses with bullies. Newsflash Politico: MoveOn is NOT her base. Hillary’s base scorns MoveOn! We left MoveOn when they declared war on Hillary.
Finally, Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard writes:
Thus far, the media has managed to report on Obama’s gaffes, but has not kept up the drumbeat of negative stories that would normally hound a candidate – especially a Republican one. I suspect most people can see the way the media is treating Obama with kid gloves – and the media will pay a price in the long run for that. Harris and Vanderhei do not seem to think the media is the main cause of the rise of Obama, but I suspect it has a lot to do with it. Reporters are playing softball with Obama while playing a death match with Clinton.
Yeah, no kidding. And they’ve managed to inflict immense damage on the Clinton campaign by their Clinton‘storylines’. In the reality show coverage of this campaign, Clinton has had the ‘villainess edit,’ with her every mistake documented, analyzed, played and replayed, while Obama has had the ‘good guy’ edit.
In a reality show, where people sign on to be made into characters in an ongoing saga of human ‘triumph’ and ‘error,’ that is entirely appropriate and possibly even entertaining. In a political campaign, it is a dreadful disservice to the country. By emphasizing only her faults and failings — and she has them; of course she does, as does Obama — while giving little or no attention to the value of what she brings to the table, the press has succeeded in hobbling and humiliating our nation’s first credible female candidate for the presidency.
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