There are a couple of reasons the McCain campaign’s new-found obsession with attacking the political media establishment as “biased” is annoying. The first, and most obvious, problem is that reporters covering the campaign adore McCain, and go to almost comical lengths to help him. (CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted this week, “[I]f there is one public figure in America who has gotten better press over the years than John McCain, I don’t know who it is.”)
The second, more subtle, problem is that reporters don’t actually seem to like the Obama campaign at all. This item from TNR’s Gabriel Sherman has been generating a lot of discussion this week.
Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama’s press office. The campaign was irked by the Times’ latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee’s accompanying front-page piece titled “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” which was running in the morning’s paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.
But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”
Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others,” Nagourney tells me. “I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”
I haven’t the foggiest idea why Nagourney would complain about this. He wrote an article that appeared on the front page of the most important newspaper in the country. His article was wrong, and was premised on a mistaken interpretation of poll results on a provocative subject.
Of course the Obama campaign was going to respond forcefully.
Nagourney’s article was about to become fodder for discussion on every major news network and morning show. Obama’s team was anxious to set the record straight, and point out Nagourney’s flawed analysis.
Indeed, Obama staffers contacted him first, the night before, and expressed concerns. He shrugged it off. The campaign responded, naturally, by explaining to everyone else why the report was wrong, before the article’s mistaken premise became the conventional wisdom.
This “crossed the line”? What line?
Nagourney screwed up. Obama staffers called him on it. If this led a reporter at a respected outlet to “flip out,” there’s something very wrong with reporters’ sense of entitlement.
Sherman’s piece added:
Reporters are grumbling more and more that the campaign is acting like the Prom Queen. They gripe that it is “arrogant” and “control[ling],” and the campaign’s own belief that Obama is poised to make history isn’t endearing, either. The press certainly helped Obama get so far so fast; the question is, how far can he get if his campaign alienates them?
Last year, when Hillary Clinton campaigned as a front-runner, Obama provided access to the press corps and won over the media. One night, during a campaign stop in Iowa, he met reporters for off-the-record drinks. He cooperated for magazine profiles and appeared on the cover of GQ. And Clinton’s relationship with the press wasn’t half as easy. “The difference is the Clinton people were hostile for no reason,” a reporter who has covered both Democrats tells me.
But, as Obama ascended from underdog to front-runner to presumptive nominee, the flame seems to have dwindled. Reporters who cover Obama these days grouse that Obama’s flacks shroud the campaign in secrecy and provide little to no access. “They’re more disciplined than the Bush people,” a reporter on the Obama trail gripes. “There was this idea of being transparent, but they’re not. They’re total tightwads with information.”
Maybe it’s just me, but this comes across as kind of whinny. DDay had a great item responding to this.
Obama isn’t a certified Village member in good standing as it is, so these indignities like keeping a private meeting private and holding a 10-minute interview to 10 minutes (yes, that’s really a compliant) are magnified. The idea that the press considers the Obama campaign operation “young and arrogant” both really betrays their bias and displays a stunning lack of self-awareness.
After all, the press has lived through eight years of a notoriously tight-lipped and secretive White House, whose President would regularly demean them in public and call them major league assholes behind their back, and they lapped it all up, believing Bush to be a popular and mythic hero long after the public had turned away.
But of course, he was a Republican, and all that humiliation was just locker-room joshing. The Democrat is supposed to be afraid of the press, because they can take him or her down over an afternoon tea, and the fact that this guy isn’t totally letting the media run roughshod over him must be deeply frustrating. It does not compute. And he’s limiting access and maximizing his campaign time! How dare he!
Aside from all the laziness and hewing to narrative and all the rest, the press corps are, in general, exceedingly vain. When the Village makes the decision that they are offended (and somehow they didn’t through eight years of a President who held them in the utmost contempt), they will lash out. And so expect this over the next several weeks.
Something to consider the next time Republicans start complaining about the media’s “bias.”