Dear Mr. Cain:
I note that yesterday when you had your fascinating Lincoln-Douglas style debate with Newt Gingrich, you were pressed by the media on lingering questions about the sexual harassment allegations. You seemed to think that as a public figure you can declare a story over when there are in aspects you still need to clear up (you can tell by the questions that you have not answered them sufficiently) and that you can say a journalist who doesn’t listen to you somehow violates a journalist’s code of ethics. Since when did a code of ethics prevent reporters from doing their main job, required by their employers and taught in journalism schools everywhere: asking questions that a news source may not wish were asked, particularly in the middle of an ongoing news story?
To refresh your memory, here are pieces of the New York Daily News account:
Growing agitated with reporters after a one-on-one debate with rival Newt Gingrich, the former business executive suggested the reporters who asked questions about the allegations were unethical. Asked if he planned to never answer questions about the incidents, he was certain.
“You got it,” he snapped, even as the allegations leave plenty of doubts about Cain’s candidacy.
Kindly display the lack of ethics. Why did the issue of journalistic ethics come up in the Bill Clinton Monical Lewinsky scandal? Or Anthony Weiner scandal? Or Richard Nixon Watergate scandal? Is there some secret “code” that somehow has been in mothballs all these years so that no public figure or media critic has pulled it out to publish to show reporters are violating a “code” by asking questions that a politician who is trying to get elected would rather are not asked?
Gingrich, however, gave Cain an opportunity to address the allegations with an open-ended question about what has surprised him about running for president.
Cain didn’t hesitate: “The nit-pickiness of the media,” he said.
You can make the argument that the original article was announced as a huge news story and was overhyped. And it indeed could have been dealt with as a “nit picky” story by full disclosure as soon as it came up, and then moving on. But someone named Herman Cain has changed his stories more often than Mitt Romney changes his principles.
“It is the actions and behavior of the media that have been the biggest surprise,” he said, his voice rising.
“There are too many people in the media who are downright dishonest. … They do a disservice to the American people,” Cain said, bringing the room to its feet.
If there is dishonesty, then how about being specific about the lies? And let me guess: the only journalist who is being honest is Sean Hannity. How about moving to disclose the full facts about the allegations? If it’s sexual harassment you can make the argument that some would accept that over the years that “sexual harassment” has become a kind of PC, political buzzword blown way out of proportion — and in some cases abused to extract revenge and money. Some will accept that argument, some won’t. It is also always fascinating to see people rise to their feet and cheer when someone in their political party comes under fire and blasts the media but when that same, exact media is somehow accurate, balanced, totally professional, only doing their job, and doing a sold journalistic job when it has stories that hurt someone in the other party.
Gingrich had nothing to gain by raising allegations of improper sexual behavior by one of his rivals. The former House speaker from Georgia has been divorced twice and married three times, including to his current wife with whom he had an affair while married to his second wife.
Yet the moment gave Cain another opportunity to decry the media, whom he has blamed for the allegations becoming public.
“If I were running this campaign the way the pundits thought I ought to be running this campaign, I would have dropped out in August,” Cain later told reporters.
Yes, you are correct about that. But PUNDITS are different than REPORTERS. PUNDITS analyze in the new and old media, on sites such as this. REPORTERS are paid to gather information and do original interviews and then present their reports to viewers or readers. Your current problem is not with the PUNDITS but with NEWS REPORTS that you have answered in a way that’s keeping a story alive that should have been short-circuited long ago. The problem with the story’s “legs” is not with the media; it is with your ineffective and chaging response, which suggests there is more to hide and therefore editors of publications including those you cannot call “the liberal media” (or has Pajamas Media just pulled a Mitt Romney?) feel it is a story begs for more exploration.
“When people get on the Cain train, they don’t get off.”
Perhaps.
But an engineer who is operating the train incorrectly can derail it.
Which is where you are headed if you remain on the same track.
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.