Yesterday, Kevin asked the question on many of our minds: “[I]s the mainstream media even going to bother reporting on the saturation robo-calling currently being funded and coordinated by the National Republican Congressional Committee? … This kind of tactic is only going to get more common unless the media trumpets it loud and clear and the Republican Party pays a price for it on Tuesday. Conversely, if it flies under the radar and helps produce a few GOP wins, they’ll do it again. And again. And again.”
That was mid-day yesterday, when the cable networks showed no real interest in the controversy. How’d the media do since then? It was, at best, a mixed bag.
NPR’s Diane Rehm tried to cover the story and get some of the usual DC pundits to talk about it, but Juan Williams and Time’s Karen Tumulty didn’t even want to touch the story, and evaded the controversy altogether, despite listener questions and comments.
The Washington Post, to its credit, ran a pretty solid story. It ran on page A8 — instead of, say, A1 — but Charles Babington and Alec MacGillis got the story quite right.
This year’s heavy volume of automated political phone calls has infuriated countless voters and triggered sharp complaints from Democrats, who say the Republican Party has crossed the line in bombarding households with recorded attacks on candidates in tight House races nationwide.
Some voters, sick of interrupted dinners and evenings, say they will punish the offending parties by opposing them in today’s elections. But critics say Republicans crafted the messages to delude voters — especially those who hang up quickly — into thinking that Democrats placed the calls.
The New York Times added a pretty solid story of its own, including the fact that the National Republican Congressional Committee has spent about $2 million on these ridiculous phone calls in the last week.
As far news coverage is concerned, these are the success stories. On the other hand, there’s the rest of the media.
I saw no mention of the story in USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. The LA Times apparently knew about the controversy, but got “cold feet.”
Seems a couple of the major dailies (the Los Angeles Times being one of them, I’m told) were priming to write up the robocall story then got cold feet. Maybe they’ll run a considered analysis in a week, when the election is in the history books.
It’s only a transparent effort on the part of Republican officials to deceive and harass voters; it’s not like that’d be important to readers today, right?
And how about the evening newscasts last night?
* ABC World News Tonight devoted two minutes to a “Polls Show That The GOP Is Catching Up” story, which is dubious enough, and made no mention of the robo-calls.
* CBS Evening News devoted two minutes to a “Polls Show GOP Closing Gap; Democrats Nervous” story (and two a half minutes to a story about the USS Intrepid getting stuck at port), but not a word about the calls.
* NBC Nightly News devoted nearly four minutes to a “New Polls Suggest Election Is Tightening In Favor Of GOP” story (and two full minutes on the “Borat” movie), but neglected to mention the robo-call story at all.
So, getting back to Kevin’s original question, “[I]s the mainstream media even going to bother reporting on the saturation robo-calling currently being funded and coordinated by the National Republican Congressional Committee?,” the answer, apparently, is no.
If recent history is any guide, the media will trumpet the results of a poll next week showing that Americans, by and large, never heard about the robo-call controversy, and news outlets will express amazement at the results.