CNN heralds McCain’s heroic triumph over non-existent ‘heckler’

April 7, 2008

It’s not only painful to think we’ll have seven more months of this kind of media coverage of the McCain campaign, it’s worth remembering that unprofessional reporting like this can help dictate the outcome an election.

To briefly recap, John McCain visited his old high school in northern Virginia last week, for what was clearly a campaign event (part of a “bio tour” that may have been recommended by Karl Rove). A 16-year-old student at the school respectfully asked McCain to clarify why he was at the school, if not for political purposes. McCain ultimately said he’d hoped that attendance at his campaign event was not compulsory, and apologized if it was.

Noting the exchange, CNN’s Jim Acosta accused the student of “heckling the senator,” and twice more called her a “heckler.” (For the record, McCain opened the floor to questions and called on the student. She was polite and respectful. In no way was this “heckling.”)

To end the segment, CNN’s Acosta told viewers, “John McCain, who is no stranger to incoming fire, able to handle that heckler there in Alexandria, Virginia.”

And some wonder why campaign reporters are referred to as McCain’s “base.” Acosta was reading a script that might as well have been written by the senator’s own aides, except they may have been more even-handed for fear of embarrassment.

Digby added:

First of all, the question was perfectly legitimate, not a heckle at all. Second McCain tries to claim it isn’t political, which is completely absurd since he’s the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States. And then this bozo compares this perfectly reasonable question to McCain taking incoming fire!

Is there really no occasion where the McCain’s Hannah Montana fanboys don’t find it necessary to mention his mighty warrior mien? Even questions from high schoolers?

I can’t take another four years of codpiece worship. I just can’t.

I’ll admit that I don’t get a lot of exposure to television news, but in 2004, I’m fairly certain John Kerry took plenty of challenging questions from various audiences. Did CNN ever tell viewers, “John Kerry, who is no stranger to incoming fire, was able to handle that heckler there”? I doubt it.

Call it a hunch.

Just one more reason why cnn has been removed form my channel line and my bookmarks. Along with fox, I just don’t go there any more… It’s sad to see what they have become.

  • The only thing that could possibly compare was the sniper fire at Tuzla airport.

  • We don’t call them the press corpse for nothing.

    Media deregulation killed America. We now have immortal psychopaths* controlling the information that most Americans receive. I’m pretty sure this won’t change anytime soon, the only hope we have is to show enough people how they’re being bamboozled…

    * http://www.thecorporation.com/
    (pay close attention to the chapter which shows how several “news” corporations argued that they have no obligation to avoid lying to the public.)

  • 2. On April 7th, 2008 at 9:28 am, KevinMc said:

    The only thing that could possibly compare was the sniper fire at Tuzla airport.

    Oh, I don’t know about that. This reminds me more of the free pass that Putsch was given during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns. How nobody could ask him about deserting the military during wartime. Or his coke habit in the ’70’s. Or his drunken driving and subsequent arrests. Or his calling a member of the media a major league a$$hole over an open mike.

    Funny how you only notice events enough to make a gratuitous Clagina insult, instead of, you know, pointing out the obvious and ubiquitous Republican’t fluffing the the media has engaged in for almost forty years now.

  • I am so glad I don’t watch TeeVee news of any kind. The so-called “journalists” are ignorant clowns. Even McCain looks good here by contrast to Acosta, and that takes some doing.

  • Acosta appears to not even have watched the tape. He says “apparently … started heckling the senator” and “what appears to be a student heckler.” Why the equivication?

    He’s not only stupid, he’s afraid to even say what he thinks he means

  • Quite possibly, Acosta isn’t aware that the word “heckler” connotes an interruption, not just an unwelcome challenge. In his mind, the definition encompasses all such “incoming fire.”

  • if the reporter believes the alarmist hype most media share about high schoolers then he probably assumed the student was amed.

  • It’s interesting, though, the first time I saw the story on CNN, they showed the clip and ended it with the girl asking the question, and McCain answering, “I knew I should have cut this thing off. The meeting is over.” You wouldn’t have known the embarrassingly awkward attempt to answer the question, but it made him look even dumber, crankier, ruder and arrogant. Maybe the Acosta thing was an attempt to rehabilitate the cadaver. And let’s be honest. This question is about the closest thing to incoming fire that McCain will get on CNN.

  • Americans want an American president who can bravely slap down an impertinent question from a sixteen-year-old girl.

  • That this polite, salient, and in all other respects, appropriate question was characterized as “incoming fire” only serves to highlight the calibre of questions and reportage that is generally found on CNN. I should add, that I do watch the network, and do so only to try and understand how misinformed many Americans (the ones who even make an effort to be informed) are.

  • (: Tom:) makes a good point about Rethuglican talking points repeated by the corporate media. Maybe I should have said that it’s safer to take a stroll through the Baghdad market than face incoming fire from the 16-year-old student.

  • [John McCain] is no stranger to incoming fire.

    Think about that metaphor for a second. John McCain’s actual experience with incoming fire was getting his plane shot down and being taken prisoner. Is that really the metaphor McCain’s fan club wants to run with?

  • If not for the video, I would have thought there must have been some other incident. Anyone dumb enough to watch this and not notice that there was no heckling deserves the news they’re getting. It’s really getting difficult to understand how this disease of American news outlets slipping so easily into propaganda keeps spreading from Fox to other networks. It’s almost as if Republicans actually enjoy being lied to, and then feel a special pride at being able to believe and repeat the lie.

    Whether calling a respectful question “heckling”, calling the surge a “success”, calling McCain a “conservative”, calling McCain a “moderate”, calling an invasion a “liberation”, calling torture “enhanced interrogation”, where in this is there any journalism or actual news reporting? When did phrasing become so much more important than facts?

  • Remember when Krugman, after reading Kissinger’s book on the Congress of Vienna, said that he realized the GOP was a revolutionary party, not an ordinary political party, and everyone called him ‘shrill’?

    The Press, like all organs of the State, exists to serve the Party, and not the other way round, for it is the Party, and not the State, which is the Vanguard of the Glorious Revolution.

    Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev Zinoviev, then
    Gingrich, DeLay, Gramm, Archer, now.

  • Grumpy, you are sounding like the Republican press. Any questioning of the guy ends up being on the order of, ‘don’t ask any difficult questions or even insinuate that the guy has any shortcomings. He’s teflon just because he is a hero…’ Well, it isn’t all he is. It is something that happened to him once a long time ago. He doesn’t get to ride on it forever and forever, in every situation. Let’s make him President, just because he spent time in the Hanoi Hilton? There are a lot if heroes out there. They aren’t all Presidential material…

    It does make me wonder though…the guy broke under toture and made propaganda films for the enemy. As a bleeding heart liberal, I don’t have a problem with that. But why don’t the compassionate(NOT) conservatives take issue with that? If Kerry had done that they would’ve started a movement to have him shot as a traitor.

  • whew. thank god our old war hero could handle that terrorist polite 16 yr old schoolgirl.

    he is getting better, though – he didn’t call her ugly and suggest her father was Janet Reno.

  • Grumpy, the point isn’t my (or anyone’s) military experience vs. that of McCain.

    The point is if you follow the metaphor and compare the highschool student asking McCain a question to the Viet Cong shooting at McCain, then that’s saying McCain’s campaign is toast. Not that I have a problem with that, but it’s not the angle McCain’s base (i.e. the press) should really want to push.

    On the merits, it would be a much better metaphor if you wanted to promote say Kerry’s military experience (who introduced a successful new strategy against the Viet Cong of more aggressively returning fire from Swift Boats). Then again Kerry’s a Democrat….

  • A Free Press should exist to question all sides and not be corporate shills, that is the ideal not the reality. The Fourth Estate had a tag sale somewhere around 1985…

  • The Fourth Estate had a tbag sale somewhere around 1985…

    There, Sickof @ 22 – fixed it for you.

    (and in the case of Matthews et al, I trust they didn’t need a very large display.)

  • Somehow, by some baffling means, the MSM seem to have convinced themselves that getting McCain elected to the White House in 2008 will magically reboot their last eight years of incessant cheerleading for the worst Administration on American history.

    The logic seems to go that if they remove Bush from the picture, then McCain would have won the Republican Primary Campaign of 2000 easily, and after trouncing the wimpy liberal Al Gore -without requiring any best-forgotten and under-reported nastiness in Florida – for the Presidency, would have gone on to do wonderful things.

    I don’t really get how they’ve got there, but that appears to be the project they’ve embarked upon.

  • Well, I suppose it would move their average up if they shill for McCain and, as would be likely, he becomes the second worst President in history.

    Right now they’re stuck on record as installing the worst.

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