John McCain has developed a legendary reputation for affording reporters unfettered access. Now, however, his campaign has apparently decided to pursue a new strategy: avoid reporters.
McCain today held a 10-minute press conference, complete with podium, microphones for the questioners, network-quality audio and a camera for a local television station, which allowed CNN to carry it live.
And where was the national press corps? Sitting on the runway 27 miles away, having been ferried to McCain’s charter plane, totally unaware that a press availability was about to take place until one of the handful of “pool reporters” sent an e-mail alert.
The reporters frantically fired up their cellular modems and logged on to CNN.com to catch the end of the press conference, unable to ask any questions. The handful of reporters there asked about the FISA terrorism bill, Iran and about McCain’s pledge to balance the budget.
McCain’s schedule for Wednesday included a note about a “gaggle” with the pool reporters, but nothing indicated a live press conference. The tactic was a first for the McCain campaign, which
basically shrugged when asked about it.
Back in January, TNR’s Jason Zengerle, noting that there’s “no denying that the media absolutely loves McCain,” helped explain the relationship between reporters and the candidate.
…McCain affords the press access like no other candidate. In the McCain campaign, there’s no barrier between candidate and reporter. If you have a question for McCain, you don’t have to bother going to his press secretary; you simply go ask him. On some days, you literally spend eight hours with the candidate, just riding with him in the back of his bus peppering him with questions on everything from Pakistan to his philosophical thoughts about suicide. Toward the end of the day, this amount of unfettered access to the candidate can actually be a bit of a problem, when you start to run out of questions for him and there are awkward silences. But, on the whole, it’s hard to overstate the sort of goodwill this access engenders among reporters.
Well, the access isn’t quite so unfettered anymore. Maybe news outlets can start treating McCain like everyone else now?
The openness seems to have been replaced with something else.
[A]ccess has been whittled away as McCain became the nominee. The Straight Talk is reserved now as a carrot for local reporters, leaving the national press corps on a charter bus trailing behind.
The new approach may reflect the growing influence of the newly-powerful Steve Schmidt, a top adviser and protege of Bush political guru Karl Rove, who was famous for his desire to control the press’s access to his candidate.
As part of these efforts, reporters are now expected to “earn” an interview-area seat on McCain’s plane. What’s more, if you sit on campaign conference calls, don’t be too surprised if McCain’s aides screen the questioners.
Despite McCain’s obvious fondness for talking with reporters, his campaign, curiously, seems to be limiting access to his aides and surrogates. One campaign reporter says that after he published stores that were not to the liking of the McCain campaign, its press office threatened to cut him off. And several weeks ago, during a conference call, an operator came on the line and told me that I “was no longer needed” on the call. Though I explained I was a journalist listening to the call, the operator said he had been told to unplug me. I protested the decision, and he said he would check and get right back. The operator never returned, and I remained on the call. But during the question period, I was not called on.
In an email, I asked Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director, if the McCain campaign was screening reporters in an attempt to manage the conference calls. She did not reply. I called the campaign’s media office and posed the same question. The woman who answered placed me on hold. A few moments later, she told me that a press officer would soon call with an answer. No one ever did.
Sounds to me like campaign reporters don’t have much of an incentive anymore to give McCain a pass on, well, everything.