So much for the media’s ‘Obama love’
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.”
zoe from pittsburgh
says:After the way the press has dealt with the Bush years the “person” in the room who seems arrogant and has “crossed the line” IS the press.
Collectively they should be falling all over themselves and at least aim to find their critical, objective voice– of both McCain and Obama.
Journalism is in crisis. Collectively they don’t know how to do their jobs anymore. I know that the internet has been blamed as the reason newspapers everywhere are hemmoraging jobs BUT the current state of American journalism might have something to do with it as well.
Regardless, because of the power of the press Obama & his camp need to figure out how not to make enemies of them– that is most certainly a losing strategy.
SteveT
says: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. — Gabriel Sherman, The New Republc
I’m not a fan of either Pres. or Sen. Clinton — because of the policies they’ve supported over the years — but I was appalled by how they were shafted by the Republicans and how the “journalists” in the corporate-controlled media helped.
So if someone says that Clinton has no reason to be “hostile” to the press, then they have their head so far up their ass that we should assume that everything else they say is crap too.
My suggestion to the media covering the Obama campaign: engage Obama in a substantive discussion on something like economics, Constitutional law, philosophy, or even the merits of Chicago-style vs. New York-style pizza. My guess is that he will keep talking until his aides come to drag him away. But study up first, because he’s smarter than you and better informed than you and I get the impression that he has no patience for fools.
But if you want to ask him about things like flag pins and daily polls, then he will — rightfully — blow you off.
stormskies
says:The Corporate/ Repiglican/Media=Mafia is simply a criminal enterprise. It is committed to creating propaganda, lies, deceptions, and ‘corporate generated narratives’ whose only reality is the fact that the corporations themselves ‘say so’: ‘we will tell you what reality is’. Just witness what Gangbang queen Couric did the other night on her ‘news’ relative to the ‘editing’ of McBush’s mistakes………why to benefit not so much him but the corporations for which he represents. Or the ‘narrative’ created by the corporations, and the pimps the represent them like Christina Matthews, about how ‘arrogant’ and ‘presumpteous’ is was for Obama to do the Europe/Iraq/ Afhganhanistan trip. Any of us standing , let’s say in a market check out line, heard anyone next to you saying ‘yes, Obama’s trip was certainly arrogant , etc ” ? Nope .. simply a corporate generated narrative … or how about the newest piece of bullshit: “McCain is catching up in the polls’ ? …….. based on exactly what one might ask ? The fact that his entire campaign has been one fucking blunder after another ? One fucking statement being changed in something else within minutes ? Or because of his ‘positions’ as in unequal pay for women, more tax breaks for the rich and , of course, the corporations, etc ? Is that why there has been a ‘surge’ for McCain ? Like I said the corporate media is simply a mafia of complicity to help whomever represents their interests. All of them should be charged, tried, and convicted for purposeful , criminal, fraud committed against the American people. They should be frog marched out of the protection of their corporate studios and right into prison ..and turned into ‘bitches’ for the enjoyment of the inmates. In Matthews case I am sure he would enjoy that ………..
joey
says:From what I have observed the press uses every interview and statement as just another means to let the public know what is wrong with Obama. They walk around looking for something to nail him on. Where as with McCain they go out of their way to downplay or cover up every gaffe or lie he puts forth. Who could blame Obama for wanting to keep the press disciplined and at arm’s length. The obvious soft-ball treatment of the republican regime shows the press to be lap dogs for sale.
The press can complain all they want but Obama camp knows they are just looking for openings to smear and distort and they will continue this agenda even after Obama is elected in a landslide. Face it, it’s a corporate republican press owned and operated by and for the corporate agenda.
howard
says:there is something wrong with reporters’ sense of entitlement, which is a key factor explaining why we get the quality of journalism we get.
exactly why lazy, second-rate intelligences who don’t read feel a sense of entitlement is a mystery to me, but there you have it….
ObamaForUS
says:Because Nagourney is a narcissistic little sycophant for McCain who occasionally writes something condescending about Obama to salve his conscience about his bias and lack of balance. If he writes garbage, he shouldn’t expect to be attacked. Maybe he should have been a real reporter and gotten the insight of EACH campaign first. You’re in the Big Leagues, now, Adam, and when you have an error, it goes up real big on the scoreboard and gets dissected for days. Get over it.
Winkandanod
says:Obama allowed his two little girls, in an unguarded, unscripted moment, to answer a few questions from an infotainment reporter for television. In a way only innocent honest children can, they revealed their dad to be a good husband and father (a guy you’d love to have a beer with). They were smart and well adjusted . Clearly being raised in a good Christian home with solid “American values.”
For this, he was pilloried by the press.
Contrast this with McCain’s family story and you can see the problem.
stormskies
says:Right .. and remember during that interview how his wife pointed out that the pants he had on were ten years old ? …….. boy , isn’t that a great sign of the ‘elitist’ ?……. what a pack of corporate pigs these ‘mainstream’ journalists are ……. the actual ‘mainstream’ are their open assholes, bent over, pants down, screaming next to the passing elephants behind them …….
Nanuq
says:The (relatively minor) thing I find “arrogant” about the Obama campaign is that the on-the-ground organizers have to BUY what might be called “campaign chum” — you know, the yard signs and buttons and bumperstickers. I think this is unprecedented. And then again, so is his campaign. But it’s not like the front-line folks in the counties are getting paid or anything. Nor has the campaign offered a single dollar to help support county campaign offices — or at least not here in little old Vermont, which is being totally taken for granted.
MsJoanne
says:Here is a REALLY good commentary on the NYT hit piece, I mean polling piece:
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/07/obama_and_race.html
I especially liked this:
This was pretty priceless, too:
I guess Mrs.Cindy Stepford McC*nt isn’t terribly popular.
MaBelle
says:I find it stunning that the left has become so compliant and pliable re: Obama. He was supposed to be a “different” kind of candidate – you know, 21st century; transparent; turning the page on the past; new kind of politics. That “unity” shtick.
Instead, we’re witnessing some of the worst Bush behavior out of him and his campaign: lying when it suits him, hypocritical (public financing, telecom immunity, abortion/choice), controlling (press photo-ops as opposed to fact-finding, no access, telling the media what they can and can’t wear, whining about news articles that don’t portray Obama favorably), and arrogance. Kinda reminds me of the same person now sitting in the Oval Office. His “true colors” so-to-speak.
If his already-oversized head gets much bigger, he’ll need a special team to carry just that around. Looking presidential is one thing. Looking like an out-of-control egomaniac with fantasies of grandeur is another.
You folks can hit McCain all you want for his gaffes, lapses, temper, etc. Most of us who bother to have a modicum of balance understand that McCain is dangerous. But we also understand that Barack Obama is equally dangerous – something the blindered and biased blogosphere seems not to see or not to care about. I don’t want Bush III. On the other hand, I don’t want Bush-lite, either and that’s what Obama and his campaign are flirting with.
Steve
says:Among the greatest political jokes of all the great political jokes is the current notion that Obama somehow owes the media a bag full of favors.
He does not.
An officer charged with the responsibility of prosecuting a war does not cater to the whims of the media, and Obama is not merely waging a political campaign—he is waging total war against the greatest enemy imaginable; an enemy that makes Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Union of Stalin and Khrushchev combined seem pale by sheer comparison.
Does Nagourney think that his feeling have been hurt? Personally, I think his idiotic screwup is worthy of being drop-kicked in the forehead with a pitching wedge.
Moronic twit….
Tom Cleaver
says:The day we see the Press Corpse face down, bleeding out from multiple large-caliber exit wounds will be a Good Thing.
These otherwise-unemployable over-educated morons need a solid kick in the ass (at a minimum) so good on the Obama campaign for so doing. Use steel-toed boots next time and leave black-and-blue marks, please.
Of course, if he fed them some barbecue they’d probably change their tune.
Paul Camp
says:What is this, third grade?
Where is that much vaunted pretense to objectivity? Kiss my ass or I’ll trash your campaign?
Columbia Journalism Review is running a series on what has gone wrong with American newspapers. This is basically it. They haven’t invested in product.