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March 31, 2008
The Love Affair Between McCain and the Press Sprains the Brain of the Liberal Blogosphere"Though I await further reports, talk of some blogospheric war makes little sense to me. We're in a dynamic situation here. And one of the biggest unknowns is: will Obama match McCain in radical openness with the press?"At Attytood, where I check in regularly, Will Bunch had some news for me on Saturday. Liberal bloggers declare war in Philly over media, McCain. He later changed it to, “UPDATED: Liberal bloggers say media-McCain love will be the battleground in the fall.” Having just written about that affair, I was interested in his report: The left-wing blogosphere is declaring an all-out war against the mainstream media – desperately concerned that inside-the-Beltway reporter-love for D.C. fixture McCain is already creating too large a mountain for any Democratic nominee to scale. I look forward to learning more about how “the media” stepped in for “the Republicans” in 2008, such that the media now have to be defeated for the Democrats to win. But even that provocative idea stops well short of war. How in-your-face and personal to get? If Bunch’s report is correct, and “the left-wing blogosphere is declaring an all-out war against the mainstream media,” there’s a few things I want to know: against whom, exactly? Is this a war of the pen, a matter of what we think and write about as critics? Or is this… let’s take culture war to the next level and de-legitimate the media for as many people as we can reach? (Of course, the right had that idea already.) If Bunch’s report is not accurate, and no such war was declared, then I would expect him to be corrected today and tomorrow, as people get back from the conference, think about what happened there, and compose their posts. Will’s updated account said “there was a lot of discussion and debate over how to deal with the media love affair, [over] how in-your-face and personal to get with allegedly wayward reporters, and what is fair game in undercutting the McCain narrative. For example… is McCain’s past divorce and speedy remarriage into the rich Arizona family that helped launch his political career in the early 1980s, something to go after?” (See this column from 2000) From Sinfonian, who live blogged the day. Digby: one idea, like Josh Marshall did, is to have readers cover local press and submit them so that there’s a national clearinghouse of information. Media Matters is good at media criticism, but they can’t go after reporters “on a very personal and ugly basis if we have to” like the blogosphere can. “The press must be shamed … by a relentless public.” Where public conduct is shameful, public shaming is good. Bunch said that Vermont blogger NTodd Pritsky brought up the recent episode where a questioner of Chelsea Clinton asked about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “People are asking Chelsea Clinton about Monica,” he said. “Why aren’t we asking McCain about Cindy” – his current wife, who McCain left his first wife for after returning from Vietnam – “or some of his lobbyist connections.” The young man who asked Chelsea about Monica Lewinsky was a student at Butler University. He told the AP he’s a Clinton supporter. I’m not sure what relevance that has for the coming war, if it’s war that’s a-coming. True, anyone who manages to get called on in a “town hall” session can speak the unspeakable and ask what the media refuses to ask. (See this example.) If its dramatic enough, it can go viral, either by Big Media tape looping or the new sharing networks that work around it. Trying to get called on by McCain so as to confront McCain with questions he hasn’t been asked by the regular press? Definitely possible. For unlike Bush he is not afraid of being questioned. Definitely risky, too. I can imagine McCain taking a Cindy question and turning it to viral advantage. Targeting whom, exactly? On February 21, the New York Times published a front-page expose on “some of his lobbyist connections,” the ones that never get written about. Remember, it blew up in their faces because the article insinuated that he’d had an affair with one of the lobbyists. But it tried to do what I believe the liberal blogosphere is calling for. That is, the Times tried to say: “Here’s a man who holds himself up as different, a man of principle, of rectitude, but is that the real McCain? We found troubling evidence that it isn’t….” So is the war going to target the people at the New York Times who tried to take on the “upright character” part of the McCain mystique and—in journalistic terms, at least— blew the story? And are they going be warred on for blowing it (losers!) or for failing to ask if the McCain of legend is the real McCain? Listen to Bill Keller explain the “larger point of the story” and “our purpose in publishing it.” After the Keating Five scandal, McCain rebuilt his career and his reputation by becoming a champion of clean government, a critic of lobbyists and the vested-interest money that courses through American politics. More than most politicians, he was keenly aware that, as he put it in one of his books, “questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics.” War on Keller, then? John Armato of Crooks and Liars, linking to these rumors of war, says he writes “as someone who knows what our liberal media will do to Obama as well, because John McCain has them wrapped around his finger.” My view: If you already know what the press and the makers of political television are going to do with McCain and Obama in 2008, you know far too much. Saturday at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher previewed the talk at Eschacon. This is the guy who wants to “Bomb Iran” and be in Iraq for the next hundred years. In the junior high popularity contest that this election has become, McCain is the Once and Future Prom King. On the other hand, the media have locked their sights on Obama, and he can look forward to more and more constant video repetition shitstorms of the Jeremiah Wright variety. Pushing big media to bring equal skepticism to McCain is an intelligent demand; and there’s plenty of material for bloggers to work with. But this requires war? It seems to me to require good blogging. “This relationship is lethal.” Same day I published How Did John McCain Obtain What He Has in the Bank with the Press? Digby posted Cosmological Flyboy. It’s good blogging, her reaction to Neil Gabler’s compelling op-ed on the pose of ironic detachment that McCain and the press share. Obama is cool, but not in the proper ironic, post modern way the press loves so much. His call to hope and change is probably going to give McCain and his fanboys a lot of laughs down the road. Look at all the silly hippies. And even if he were a cynic and a ironist, which he isn’t, Obama is stuck with the liberal party and they are, like, totally uncool with all their useless blabbering about icky women’s issues and goo-goo anti-war crap and talk about poor people. Talk about a bunch of bringdowns. Digby is right to emphasize how much it’s a guy thing between McCain and the press. “Because of his POW history and his savvy manipulation of their hero worship, they have imputed the character of the young man of integrity who stood steadfastly by his fellow prisoners forty years ago to the older sleazy, self-serving, intellectually lazy politician he became.” Something like that did happen. But I don’t think Digby is right to see this relationship—which is deeply neurotic—as a fixed thing. It’s more in motion, and about to come under a lot of stress. Some of it from within journalists themselves. This is why, though I await further reports, talk of some blogospheric war makes little sense to me. We’re in a dynamic situation here. And one of the biggest unknowns is: will Obama match McCain in radical openness with the press? The best indications are that McCain is about to throw a press think wild card into the mix. We don’t know what difference it will make because it’s never been tried by one nominee in a head to head presidential race, as far as I know. Like so many other things this year, none of the pros had predicted it would happen. And maybe it won’t pan out as the pressure builds. But McCain says he is going to continue to open himself to questioning by reporters throughout his run for the White House. You travel with McCain, you get to ask him questions. On the record, with lots of different opportunities, day and night. “It keeps me intellectually stimulated.” Can you really run for president like that? Most campaign advisers campaign against it. Besides the risks of gaffe and misstatement, they know that their own control over the campaign—the whole idea of message discipline—is diminished when the candidate is constantly sounding off to reporters. The handlers insight: you can’t run the campaign and be the nominee at the same time. (The 1972 movie, The Candidate, is all about this.) Howard Kurtz asked McCain about it in January. As the JetBlue charter from Michigan touched down in South Carolina, I strolled up to John McCain’s front-row seat — none of his aides batted an eye — and asked if he would continue to chat with reporters around the clock if he won the Republican nomination. Can’t stop. Destroys credibility if I change now. Keeps me thinking. Reporters: lower level of human being. Kurtz was supposed to chuckle at the insult, which is the towel-snapping part of the affair. “They keep me thinking” is a bit subtler. The man who is benefiting from hero worship is well advised to tell the worshippers that they instruct him. This allows them to think the interaction more equal than it really is. “Access and New Hampshire townhalls.” Kurtz’s check-in was more than two months ago. The other day in my comments section I asked Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of Reason, who wrote a recent book on McCain mythology, whether the kind of aides now being added to his campaign were the kind who wouldn’t bat an eye at unrestricted access by Washington Post reporters with open notebooks. His reply surprised me: Back when he was still running as the presumptive GOP front-runnter — in 2006 and early 2007 — he surrounded himself with Bush media types who erected some protective layers around him: Barring rabble like me from having any sit-downs, and (more importantly) eschewing the cozy bus rides for incessant (and largely unsuccessful) fundraising events. Jane Hamsher says: “The media have locked their sights on Obama.” If she’s referring to what happens when the perception of Obama love becomes strong enough within the press corps that they self-consciously look for ways to bring some bad noise… yeah, that moment is here. (And it can happen with the press and McCain, too.) If she means the admiration for Obama within the press corps is over, and now they seek to destroy him, just like they did with Al Gore… no way. Political reporters are in the main still astonished and impressed with Obama. He defied their odds, and proved himself better at horse race punditry than they are. An alternative to declaring some all-out war against the mainstream media lies within these coordinates:
That’s the opposite of war. That’s persuasion. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… April 21: Kevin Drum says he is “baffled” by Obama’s stingy press availability and doesn’t understand the thinking. I’m with Kevin, but watch his commenters give him an earful. For the topically obsessed: watch a Bloggingheads video of Time’s Ana Marie Cox and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. They argue in detail about Neil Gabler’s take, barbeque at the candidate’s ranch and the tempestuous affair between McCain and the press, as well as the tension between bloggers and journalists. All matters in my last two posts are covered, though not always well. My summary here. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters (who was there in Philly) emails about my line, This requires war? It seems to me to require good blogging. I think the point Duncan and others were making this weekend is that the press doesn’t really respond to ‘“good blogging.” For instance, Media Matters for the last month has noted again and again and again and again that McCain clearly flip-flopped on immigration and yet almost nobody in the press mentions it when the topic, in reference to McCain, comes up… So sure, it’d be nice if bloggers simply had to point out reporting deficiencies and the press then responded. But the blogosphere is tired of politely, and repeatedly, pointing out the media’s errors regarding McCain. So i think many within the blogosphere will declare war. Digby replies to this post. It’s a long and thoughtful answer, which I won’t try to summarize. When I said that bloggers could get “personal and ugly” in ways that institutions like Media Matters couldn’t, I wasn’t suggesting that we “take the culture war to the next level and de-legitimate the media for as many people as we can reach.” That’s hyperbole that nobody even came close to saying. Well, I agree with that. In his Washington Post column, Howard Kurtz wrote about my exchange with Digby. “It’s no surprise that liberal bloggers are starting to train their fire on McCain and what they see as his media enablers, but some have apparently concluded that journalists are the enemy.” Meanwhile, more signs that McCain plans to run an unconventional campaign. The blogger TRex, an FDL-alum, who was also at Eschacon. I think that it’s kind of an overstatement that an oath of blood-vengeance was sworn out on the Big Dogs. We definitely need to be putting the spurs to the people who are supposed to be holding McCain accountable and are instead literally eating from his hand, but that’s kind of what we’ve always done. Over at Firedoglake, Eli explains that a declaration of war on the mainstream media is meant… not to completely discredit them as an institution (although, come to think of it, that might not be such a bad thing), but to hammer them ruthlessly every time they attack Democrats with lazy stereotypes and high-school sniping, and every time they fawn over McCain or any other macho Republican manly men who might set their loins a-quiver. And maybe, just maybe, we can scare some of them into occasional honesty, or raise a big enough stink to damage the worst offenders’ credibility. The post also includes a fantastic claim that is, essentially, a lie. “The media are telling us that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim or Muslim sympathizer.” No, “the media” aren’t telling you that, Eli. But it makes for a nice war cry. Later at Firedoglake, Scarecrow explains it this way: Liberal bloggers are convinced that Democrats aren’t just running against the Republicans; they’re running against a media framing of the parties and the candidates that makes it far more difficult for Democrats to win. But this year it’s worse; the Democratic nominee must overcome the media’s blind love affair with John McCain, a bias so effective in shielding McCain from criticism it could put McCain in the White House. “Our only question is how to increase the speed and amount of pain we can inflict.” Philly blogger Mithras in the comments: Political reporters are a fickle, amoral herd. When the GOP proxy guns are trained on Obama or Clinton, they will eagerly repeat right-wing talking points in order to heighten the conflict. When Gore got gored and Kerry got swiftboated, we argued and reasoned and got no where. (Also, the candidates hoped in vain that people would see through the BS.) This blog is new to me. The author writes well. Ché Pasa comments on this post and Digby’s: This means war! War on the AP? You may want to read this first. Cindy McCain’s Fortune Provides Senator With Private Jets, Vacation Homes. Washington Times: Blogger outreach boosts McCain. Even as talk radio was brutalizing Sen. John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries, conservative bloggers reached a respectful truce with the Arizona senator over touchy issues and gave him what the campaign called a “tremendous positive psychological” boost. Same article, “McCain treated bloggers similar to other reporters, including repeatedly inviting them to travel on the campaign bus with the press.” Michael Hisrch in Newsweek: The World According to John McCain. There is McCain the pragmatist: worldly-wise and witty, determined to follow the facts to the exclusion of ideology—a man willing to defy his own party and forge compromise, even with liberals like Ted Kennedy (on granting illegal immigrants some amnesty) and John Kerry (on normalizing relations with Vietnam). And then there is the zealous advocate, single-minded about pressing his cause, sometimes erupting in outrage at detractors and willing to stand alone—without any allies at all, if need be. Sigh.
Posted by Jay Rosen at March 31, 2008 1:18 AM
Comments
It will be interesting to watch a political blogwar related to a presidential campaign. Thanks for the heads up. Posted by: Laurie Manny at March 31, 2008 7:02 AM | Permalink Jay, Actually, I think this is all very healthy. The Press ought to be able to flack for whoever they want and should defend themselves if they think the accusations of flacking are unfair. They could make their lives much easier if they would admit to their own biases. In a free society, opinions are good things, not bad. Or as Thomas Jefferson said "Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth [than attack and defense] whether in religion, law or politics." Posted by: Steve Boriss at March 31, 2008 10:18 AM | Permalink Conservative anti- illegal immigration bloggers and radio talk show hosts have been all over McCain's flips, flops, reflips and denials of previous flops and flips with regard to immigration. (See Kaus for more recent examples) Anyway, I wonder if folks put the hyper-partisanship aside whether there wouldn't be an interesting left-right new media coalition built around the idea of politicians being more honest and specific about their policy views. Seems to me there is pretty strong agreement across the political spectrum about how dishonest McCain (for whom I intend to vote) is about immigration. Posted by: Dave Mastio at March 31, 2008 11:09 AM | Permalink Here's a passage in a Washington Post "news story" worth studying. Seriously, read it over and over again, and reflect on how much money is in them thar bank: McCain is often portrayed in the news media as a global John Wayne who would tread on the world stage with a Navy veteran's swagger and talk tough toward unfriendly governments in Iran and North Korea. Posted by: Matt Welch at March 31, 2008 12:14 PM | Permalink Atrios began the day by saying that the news media do not respond to persuasion. He's emailed reporters dozens of time to say that they had gotten a fact wrong and never got a response, much less a correction. The only thing that works, he said, is to inflict pain on them by creating a blog s***storm. When that's happened, those same reporters would call him, wounded, to complain about being attacked. So, how does this apply to the '08 race? We anticipate that the Republicans will need to raise the negatives of the eventual Democratic candidate. Those attacks will have to be made by surrogates through the press in order not to make McCain's campaign look as dirty as it will be, especially if the candidate is Obama (because the attacks will consist of coded racism). If we're right about that, this sounds incredibly naive: If she means the admiration for Obama within the press corps is over, and now they seek to destroy him, just like they did with Al Gore… no way. Political reporters are in the main still astonished and impressed with Obama. Political reporters are a fickle, amoral herd. When the GOP proxy guns are trained on Obama or Clinton, they will eagerly repeat right-wing talking points in order to heighten the conflict. When Gore got gored and Kerry got swiftboated, we argued and reasoned and got no where. (Also, the candidates hoped in vain that people would see through the BS.) This time is going to be different. We know what to do when reporters join the Drudge-led puke funnel: kneecap them immediately. Our only question is how to increase the speed and amount of pain we can inflict; the morning session of Eschacon was devoted to exactly that. And it will be different in another way: Neither Obama nor Clinton will fail to respond to attacks. Bottom line: Rosen is wrong. The news media will collaborate with right-wing propaganda, as they have consistently done since Clinton's first term. You can't use reason to counter slander. The only thing that works to stop it is deterrence. What's funny is that Will Bunch IS the media. That is, he's not just a liberal blogger, he's also a "non-partisan" political reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. I don't think McCain will have many conservative bloggers covering him under the cover of "non-partisan newspaper reporter." Posted by: CJ at March 31, 2008 1:46 PM | Permalink Once the Democratic nomination is settled, McCain will be getting considerably less love from the press in general. That's not to say that people such as David Broder, who delivered a completely hormonal assessment of McCain's foreign policy positions over the weekend, won't keep spouting their "principled/iconoclast/maverick" crap, but the people covering the campaign on a daily basis simply won't be able to maintain the studiously uncritical and amnesiac coverage that distinguishes them now. I'm assuming a minimal amount of personal and professional self-respect on reporters' parts that may not in fact exist, but if it does, the free ride is very close to being over. McCain has never been in this position before, where he's the nominee instead of the challenger, and neither have his fans in journalism, and I think they're both going to find that the current relationship between them is unsustainable. What reporters seem to react to most strongly is anything that makes them appear stupid, and that's probably where bloggers intent on blowing up the McCain-press relationship should focus their attention. It seems stupid, for instance, to keep repeating that McCain has taken a stand against torture when he voted for the measure institutionalizing it—the Military Commissions Act—and against the measure recriminalizing it—the intelligence authorization bill that would have made the Army Field Manual interrogation procedures, which ban torture, universal. That's a point that when hammered sufficiently, as it will be, will eventually penetrate. On a side note, if Obama gets the Demo nomination I'm looking forward to watching heads explode as reporters who are in love with both him and McCain attempt to resolve their cognitive dissonance when the two start saying nasty things about one another. Posted by: weldon berger at March 31, 2008 5:39 PM | Permalink well, since I was there, let me give my two cents. The people at Eschacon declared war on the media, then refused to appoint any military leadership to run the war. There was lots of talk about how absolutely essential it was to promulgate a reality-based McCain counter-narrative to the false one that the media will be promoting -- and then go after reporters/news organizations when they ignore the real McCain, and present him as the "bright shining lie" that is the McCain myth. There was also lots of talk about the successes of the progressive blogosphere in the past -- the 15,000 letters to the editors sent to local papers after Nedra Pickler's AP smear of Obama's patriotism, the humiliation of Joe Klein, the Deborah Howell/Post fiasco, as well as actually substantive accomplishment like (so-far) preventing telecom immunity, and the effort to stop Social Security privatization (which J. Marshall should get partial credit for, but the idea that it was the progressive blogosphere that did it is kinda silly.) But since it was a bunch of progressives, the very idea that accomplishing the goal would both leadership to organize the effort (i.e. a person or group who would decide on 2 or 3 specific efforts to make each week), and a commitment by at some a decent chunk of the progressive blogosphere to follow through on what "the leadership" decided, was treated like a skunk in the road. "We're not like Republicans", "we don't do top down", "I'm a liberal, and nobody tells me what to post about", "our successes have been organic" and "but what about the risks?" were all used to shoot down the idea. To the progressive blogosphere, "war" means the occasional blogswarm to Swampland or the Post's comment section. The idea that you need leadership at the top (the agenda setter), and in the middle (the bloggers themselves), to actually point the troops in the same direction is alien to us. Joe Klein and Deborah Howell, and Nedra Pickler still have their jobs (as do Michael Gordon, John Solomon, Jay Carney and tons of other regular committers of journalistic atrocities -- except for Judith Miller, I can't think of any "mainstream" journalist who has lost their job because of shoddy reporting that was in keeping with conventional wisdom in "the village", and the real reason Miller lost her job was that the whole "Libby" thing brought to much attention to how she did business). So while "war" was declared, its pretty much the "underpants gnome theory of war"; Step 1: Progressives complains about the media ************** oh, the reason I stopped by was to point out something completely off-topic, but is the kind of thing that jay discusses a lot here -- another case of the realization of the potential for citizens to play an important role in reporting. Burnt Orange Report got its readers who attended the Texas Democratic County/State Senate District Caucuses to report on the results -- and what happened at the . Here's an excerpt... 11:35pm by Phillip - We adjusted SD 13 slightly, adding 17 delegates to account for the "at-large" portion. I used the numbers from the Houston Chronicle. What's really funny is that, despite the massive amount of documentation we provided here tonight, they still use the AP's numbers --- which show a relative split between Obama and Clinton at 933 (Clinton) and 937 (Obama). That means the Associated Press is only 3,700 delegates behind us! Show some love to us bloggers for better reporting, and donate to TexBlog PAC!
Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 31, 2008 6:43 PM | Permalink I know you would love to believe that the media is in love with McCain. And compared to most other Republicans, you're probably right. Because the news media has been established, in study after study after study, to be relentlessly and significantly skewed left. Since McCain is one of the most lefty Republicans, then the media loves McCain, so long as he's running against another Republican - or at least, not running against a Democrat. But let's discipline our thinking some (I know...perish the thought!). Is there any evidence, other than Duncan Black's and Josh Marshall's paranoia, to suggest that the overwhelmingly liberal media will stick with McCain over a Democrat candidate? Any evidence of that at all? And if Hillary should somehow become the nominee, how would you control for Hillary's offputting personality? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 31, 2008 7:36 PM | Permalink Is there any evidence, other than Duncan Black's and Josh Marshall's paranoia, to suggest that the overwhelmingly liberal media will stick with McCain over a Democrat candidate? Google "Halperin, Drudge Rules Our World"..or just click on the link, since I already done that for you. Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 31, 2008 7:53 PM | Permalink Chelsea Asked About Monica AGAIN This 'meme' has already been picked up by the media: The McCain of the Moment. Digby replies to my post: Party Crashers. McCain is one of the most lefty Republicans I challenge this assertion. Posted by: joel hanes at March 31, 2008 11:08 PM | Permalink Joel, There are 49 Republicans in the Senate. McCain comes 47th in his rating from the American Conservative Union for 2006. His lifetime ranking still puts him in the left third or so among Republicans, and his ACU ranking is substantially lower than his lifetime ranking over the last 10 years. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 1, 2008 12:28 AM | Permalink Really, Jay, your pearl-clutching over the whole "war" with the press thing is pretty fucking stupid. Digny tears your assumptions apart at her blog, and rightly so. Grow up. Liberal bloggers who follow things closely get mad at the press for not doing extensive follow up on issues like John McCain and his views on Social Security. In the WSJ, McCain says he agrees with President Bush on Social Security and private accounts, in contrast to the policies posted on his own website: "You can't keep promises made to retirees," says Mr. Holtz-Eakin, referring to the level of benefits the government is supposed to pay future retirees. "But you can pay future retirees more than current retirees." This isn't some quibble. Social Security is a $608 billion dollar annual item and 21% of the entire budget. Can we get a little follow up on McCain's statement "I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it -- along the lines that President Bush proposed." ? McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman didn't get the memo (Think Progress): On ABC’s This Week today, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) falsely claimed that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “is not for the private accounts to take the place of social security.” “He’s for what Bill Clinton used to call Social Security plus,” said Lieberman. It's been a month of ping-pong in the press trying to nail down John McCain's position on private accounts and Social Security. How hard is it to read back to John McCain his quote "I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it -- along the lines that President Bush proposed." and ask "Is that your position or the position on the website?" It's a pretty large, basic policy question that can be resolved with follow-ups by reporters with access, not by bloggers. If something this simple can't be resolved with basic follow-up then don't be suprised if DFH bloggers start reporting on John McCain schtupping Belle Starr, Bart Starr, and Bart Simpson. And if that doesn't work, it's going to be DFH bloggers covering Tim Russert's forbidden trysts with a Krispy Kreme worker. And the war of uncouth words will escalate until....some reporter actually gets a freakin' ANSWER to a follow-up question about Social Security from John McCain. You can say the press is doing it's job by asking but 1) the lack of clarity on such a major issue doesn't seem to be outrageous to a majority in the press and 2) the minority in the press who actually find McCain's answers on SS troubling aren't so troubled that they stay on topic and ask any fruitful follow-up questions. When Digby says she's going to fight the press, this is why. All these BBQ eating McCain-loving reporters on the Straight Talk Express and none of them can take 30 seconds to ask John McCain one question on SS and one follow up to resolve an issue that involves one-fifth of the entire federal budget. Posted by: joejoejoe at April 1, 2008 6:50 AM | Permalink And one of the biggest unknowns is: will Obama match McCain in radical openness with the press? Says Jay. digby notes this (in the reply Jay linked): But I would be very surprised if McCain would allow liberal bloggers on the back of the bus and I suspect the press corps wouldn't like it much either. The BBQ included two people, one from the Newark Star Ledger the other from the National Review. There are certainly blogs with more readership than either of those publications. Would the campaign allow a rep from DailyKos and FDL on the bus? "Radically open" only to reporters who understand the rules, is neither open nor radical. Ana Marie Cox pointed out that the reporters who ask embarrassing questions are almost always those new to the campaign. Bumiller were soon learn that always on the record means that there are questions that can't be asked and that gaffes don't count. Bloggers would not, um, internalize those rules. Can't have too much openness. ---------------- I also don't, in the end, think the Straight Talk Express can keep running through a presidential general election campaign. There is simply too much scrutiny. Bush charmed them by never talking policy, and playing dominance games (AFAICT reporters were never the quarterback, always the equipment manager). McCain is gonna have to drop the policy talk. He's way, way too bad at it. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 1, 2008 7:43 AM | Permalink I really don't know what Jay wants. The MSM types have shown, repeatedly, that they allow their scripts to be written for them by party hacks. They repeat Republican talking points ad nauseam. As a group they are somewhat in the middle when it comes to brainpower and use of their critical faculty. As for the so-called liberal media: these people use each others ideas. Just look at Chris Matthews gang of yes men and women. Do you see Gene Robinson, or Howard Fineman or Andrea Mitchell doing any serious reporting or analysis? They are just marionettes helping to push Matthews' blather of the day. Look at the Best Team on TV: Jack Cafferty has changed from a lovable curmudgeon into a Clinton hating regurgitator of convention anti-Clinton wisdom. He thinks he is funny. And Father Russert? The blogs are on their own. If reason is to be the standard then Jay ought to find some other line of work. Posted by: Alan at April 1, 2008 8:30 AM | Permalink I really don't know what Jay wants. No list of demands. But one thing that concerns me is well represented by this comment at Digby's place: Like I wrote several weeks ago in response to a post on this same topic, the best, if not only way to combat media bias, laziness, stupidity, dishonesty, etc., is by "taking out" a couple of fairly well-known and respected journalists and pundits, by humiliating them publicly beyond the point of redemption. I.e. do to them what they did to Rather (except in a reality-based manner). The rest will get the message loud and clear, and start to clean up their act. Not out of conscience or ethics, but out of self-preservation--which for most people is really the only thing that ever truly motivates (well, there's also that carrot thing, but these people make way too much, and the average blogger too little, to be able to buy them off, plus it's not ethical). They'll scream bloody murder, not fair, lynch mob, blah blah blah. But they'll get the message and act accordingly. It's the naivete of thinking that "taking out" a few pundits and ruining them the way Rather was ruined is simply a matter of will, of being angry enough to do it, but of course to do it "with a fact-based approach." As if big investigations relying on documents that no one can authenticate are simply lying around, waiting for the blog push that would humiliate the journalists involved. Meanwhile, if McCain does keep the straight talk express going--meaning constant access and question time at all hours of the day and night--what then? Like Jay Ackroyd, I have my doubts whether it can be sustained, but there are some signs that he's planning to run an unconventional campaign. To me it's an unknown, but it's striking that the liberal blogosphere isn't focused at all on the differences between the Bush Bubble and the Straight Talk Express. Like Weldon, I find it impossible to believe that the "love affair" will remain the same amid the crucible of general election campaigning. However, what will remain the same is that Chris Matthews will always be a clown and a blowhard, and this could obscure a more fluid situation. Finally, Howard Kurtz wrote about my exchange with Digby today. He digs up the same quote of his that I used from his January check-in with McCain, and adds... "It's no surprise that liberal bloggers are starting to train their fire on McCain and what they see as his media enablers, but some have apparently concluded that journalists are the enemy." kovie is being hyperbolic. There is no way to "take out" Joe Klein. I am absolutely convinced that Rather was R@tf**ked, that the forgeries came from the Bush camp. The blogosphere is antithetical to that kind of organized dirty trickery. What will work is pressure. The emergence of the "why the press loves McCain" articles is in part a response to the blogosphere yelling about it, and to people writing to their local papers complaining about it. I'm royally ticked that the NYT has written two major pieces on McCain's fundraising, and neither mentioned his FEC troubles. So I've sent a couple of notes to the public editor. Enough of those, and he'll look into it. Even Joe Klein's work has gotten better since he started getting direct reader commentary. I just read Greg Mitchell's So Wrong for So Long. A recurrent reason that editors and producers give for toning down negative stories about US action is the mail they would get when they showed a dead child or an American soldier killed in action. There's no need to "take anybody down." And I don't really think kovie means it. And, IAC, if there really is a Village conspiracy, it's not the talent that is running it. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 1, 2008 10:22 AM | Permalink There's no need to "take anybody down." And I don't really think kovie means it. Exactly, it's posing, it's puffery (mean variety, as against "nice" puffery) which the blogosphere is supposed to be good at calling out. Here's TRex returning to the subject today after Digby's post. Earlier, I noted Jay Rosen’s post where he was pretty taken aback at some of the high-handed verbiage he read coming out of EschaCon (most of which hit the plate with a lot more mustard on it that I think it left the pan with, if you know what I’m saying), but I have to say that I understand the frustration. I think I know what's he saying. On the other hand, this comment from Digby's place has a lot of common sense in it: I submit that journalists -- even Big ones -- are not independent operators like bloggers; they do not choose their stories, they do not edit them, they have no direct control over whether their work ever sees the light of day. Italics mine. “If liberal bloggers want to chastise the MSM for its long love affair with Senator Amnesty — hey, get in line. Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin have been complaining about this MSM-McCain romance for years, and Rush Limbaugh’s been doing it since at least 1999.” This is worth more thought. Not really. McCain isn't really too liberal for neocons. What the neocons are doing is taking aim at the media. The media have the power to scrutinize and expose, if they choose or are allowed to do it. They don't like McCain going off script by consorting with MSM. Although he may be coopting many of them with his "candor," accessibility, and BBQs, the appearance to neocon pundits is that he is bucking their attempts to decertify the media. As for the general notion that pressure on reporters doesn't mean a thing because they don't answer to the public, well, that's just a decertification of the power of consumer to reject a product they don't like. Putting pressure on advertisers and investors by boycotting their products or inundating their corporate offices with protests and letters would have a similar effect. When it comes right down to it, money talks. Jay, you wrapped a fascinating discussion around a silly trope--arguing about whether to call the holding-journos'-feet-to-the-fire a "war" or not. Egads I may have just called it the wrong thing myself. But do carry on. Posted by: Nash at April 1, 2008 3:40 PM | Permalink Not really. McCain isn't really too liberal for neocons. What the neocons are doing is taking aim at the media. You are confusing conservatives with neocons. They're not the same. Posted by: Matt Welch at April 1, 2008 4:01 PM | Permalink No, I'm not. I consider the talk radio hosts to be neocon shills, just as I consider newspaper pundits like Maureen Dowd to be in bed with the neocons. Really, Ferdy? That'll be news to Miss Dowd, and to the neocons. When Josh Chafetz wrote The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd, he wasn't exactly speaking as a friend or an ally. Posted by: Michael Brazier at April 1, 2008 6:00 PM | Permalink Ferdy, The talk radio hosts are neocons? Limbaugh? Hannity? News to me, and no doubt, news to them. Those guys were conservatives long before the neocons came to prominence. Neoconservatism is at its heart a small "l" liberal argument, anyway. The criticisms of neoconservatism leveled by the left are fundamentally illiberal. Smart liberals, like Christopher Hitchens, figured that out a long time ago. Unfortunately, smart liberals are few and far between. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 1, 2008 6:35 PM | Permalink And smart conservatives rarer still. Those talk radio hosts Jason cites carried neocon water all through the bush years. How do they wipe it off now? Perhaps it's made easier knowing that their audience is made up of scholars like Jason. Posted by: Danny Guam at April 1, 2008 7:15 PM | Permalink The liberal blogosphere wants to (punish?) (go to war with?) the press for rewarding McCain's accessible campaign, and by doing so, help Obama's or Clinton's bubble campaigns? Cool! Murphy's war law: If the enemy is within range, so are you. I think you can see the difference "access" makes in this NY Times account. The reporters are closer to the McCain action.... Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumed Republican nominee, was beginning a tour to highlight his family’s long tradition of military service. In Meridian, Miss., he regaled reporters on his bus with tales of his exploits as a young pilot, including when he was disciplined for flying too close to another plane. That was on a field that happened to be named for his grandfather. Heh! Why not let's play a game of competent paraphrase? "McCain, whose youthful military career was tainted by recklessness with valuable government property and insinuations of nepotism, was blindsided when the Prime Minister of Iraq, whose administration he supports, launched a unilateral offensive without coordinating with the US military. Meanwhile, his wife Cindy, the would-be First Lady, revealed a mawkish and superficial grasp of her husband's Iraq War policy, when her most profound response to the difficult decisions that may face him as Commander in Chief was an emotionally unstable overreaction at the sight of a bereaved bomb-sniffing dog." Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at April 2, 2008 7:05 AM | Permalink This is the kind of thing that makes me feel depressed about media criticism as popular activity. It's from Firedoglake: At the same time, the media are telling us that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim or Muslim sympathizer, that he's an angry black separatist or angry black separatist sympathizer, that he's all hope and no plan or spine, that he's The Most Liberal Senator Evar, and his supporters are all sexist. They're telling us that Hillary is some kind of calculating, ruthless she-beast who will sacrifice the Democratic party on her altar of ambition, and her supporters are all racist. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but not much. Notice that with sentences like, "the media are telling us that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim or Muslim sympathizer," the author is projecting what some of his scurrilous political opponents are saying on to "the media" and ends up lying to himself and to this (very popular) blog's readers: Look at it again: "The media are telling us that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim or Muslim sympathizer." No. The media are not telling anyone that. It's an underground campaign by operatives. Big Media has been quite responsible in putting that particular claim to rest. But 200+ comments at FDL, no one bats an eye. The Media is a noun with no referent. And the people who use it the most--left and right--like it that way Political blogs on either side of the aisle are loaded with crackpots and extremists. Truth, nuance, fair play have no quarter there. Jay, you write for Huff Post. Can't you see how wacky that place is? Why do you expect "the media" to be treated any better than all the other strawmen these fanatics are fighting? Geez, you know it's bad when Zachary Roth at CJR's Campaign Desk is defending McCain from Obama, The U.S., Iraq, and 100 Years. I mean, these are fighting words: ...In other words, [Obama]’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind. Jay, you write for Huff Post. Can't you see how wacky that place is? Absolutely. The same attitudes are vastly in evidence there. If I appeared to confine it to one site, or one "side," that would be a gross error. Right and left, people make lunatic statements about the media and what it is doing. I just isolated a particularly clear case. No. The media are not telling anyone that. It's an underground campaign by operatives. Big Media has been quite responsible in putting that particular claim to rest. But 200+ comments at FDL, no one bats an eye. C'mon Jay. Surely you remember this If the media put it to bed, why was Hillary even asked if she thought he was a muslim -- she was practically badgered on the question by Steve Kroft....and that was less than a month ago? Why was Obama asked about Farrakhan at the last debate -- repeatedly? (remember, this was before the Wright story actually became news.) I'm the last person you'll find defending Obama, but the idea that the mainstream media wasn't actively complicit in legitimzing the "muslim rumor", and isn't still "dog whistling" it, is pretty far-fetched. Posted by: p.lukasiak at April 2, 2008 8:42 PM | Permalink No, your claim is far fetched. So you come on, Paul. One can point to the original Washington Times article, to Fox News irresponsibly re-cycling it, to that confusing and unfortunate--okay, wretched--Post article, and I am sure a few others, and if you would like me to concede these examples do exist I am happy to do so. But on the whole (and what else can, "the media are telling us..." mean but, "on the whole, the media are telling us...") the mainstream media wasn't actively complicit in legitimizing the "muslim rumor", isn't "dog whistling" it now, as Eli claimed, and is probably the way that most people who know it's false know it's false. Added later... As a statement about the whole, the FDL observation is an untruth, and useless for navigating any actuality. But I would go further, Paul. To tell people "the media" is doing something to them, when their political opponents are the ones doing it, is an attempt at infantalizing and in fact de-politicizing them. I don't know if I'd ever consider this silliness a war. What I do find interesting though, is how the political process has been impacted by web 2.0. Posted by: Christopher Myers at April 2, 2008 10:17 PM | Permalink In going through this thread, I was surprised how unusually agitated Jay became, particularly with what I thought was a reasonable response by p.lukasiak in his pointing out the Wa. Post’s bringing to broader and brighter light the memes re: Barack Obama’s Muslim/madrassa connections. (I am an Obama supporter, but the angriest political note I have ever written is the recent one to ABC News when they breathlessly reported on Hillary’s whereabouts during the time the Bill/Monica tryst allegedly took place, literally hours after the Clintons finally released the White House logs.) What made Jay’s reaction to the “left’s” sincere complaints - some admittedly more angry than others (ya think?), sort of bewildering is how deftly and bemusedly he handles the right-wing culture warriors who habitually come in, not to learn anything, but to do their best to trash Jay’s comment threads by cloaking the same tiresome talking points in the journalistic discussion of the day. They typically do not succeed because of the high quality of Jay’s posts and many of the other comments, including Jay’s follow-ups, which often round out his points, and which have often led to a greater understanding of the issues at hand and even a few revelations. Jay’s discussions on Bush/Cheney’s unprecedented use of “rollback,” “decertification,” “creating their own reality” are personally vivid examples. Another one: what the “liberal blogosphere” is attacking and what Jay is defending are not even close to the same thing. What the left is attacking is much broader; it is, for the lack of a better term, the whole of the political message rendering system that many on the left (and not just a few in the center) would argue has cheapened the dialogue and sharply skewed the politics to the right, and which has reached a level of influence that has the left feeling helpless - hence the anger and the willingness to do whatever they can to fight it. What Jay is defending, if I understand correctly, is the mainstream media’s active complicity in all this; that the left is wrongly accusing the media of aligning itself in ideology and in action with the right-wing agenda. Jay even allowed as to how the left and right both have the crazies, which is true, but the point that I think is being missed is the matter of scale. The fact both camps have wacky inhabitants is irrelevant, and looking at these issues by comparing sides or camps, even more so. I wish I had more time to get into what the left is really complaining about, but this diary from a while back at Daily Kos covers a lot of it. As you can see, this diary was written over a year ago, and I hope gives one the sense of the never-ending barrage of personal attacks that come at the left - imo to deflect attention from the real issues, the ease with which they get to the front pages and television screens, and how it all has been enabled. This is what p.lukasiak is talking about imo; the mainstream media is not so much complicit in it as it has been swept up by it. Previous discussions here set forth that Bush/Cheney’s use of “rollback” and “decertification” of the media is unprecedented, and that it was a radical departure from some gradual trend of a couple of decades. I submit that the “rollback” and “decertification” started in earnest with the creation of the right-wing think tanks, talk radio, news organizations and so forth in the 80’s, and greatly enabled by the deregulation of media ownership and content shortly thereafter. Bush/Cheney’s treatment of the media has been radical, sure, but is an absolutely logical extension of what had taken place before. This blog is not immune. I made an erroneous comment the other day about the right-wingers who do not realize this is a journalism blog; they realize fully well what this is and they are simply doing their small part to rollback or decertify Jay’s blog with their repeated attempts to run Jay’s comment threads off the rails. Posted by: rollotomasi at April 3, 2008 8:23 AM | Permalink Thanks, Rollo. I thought the ABC News item about Hillary's whereabouts while the blue dress was being stained was disgusting and unfair. Yes, I am fighting the tendency of the left to allow its complaints about "the whole of the political message rendering system" to focus on the people who produce the news, who have their own problems and need lots of criticism arising from those problems. I think this is a very bad habit. It's unfair, analytically weak, and it encourages a foolish symmetry between the left and right wing's attacks on Big Bad, Be-My-Daddy Media. To me it is sandbox politics, often done for fun as much as anger, an endless repetition of the social dynamics of high school, in which the losers on the fringes get to take their frustration out on the "cool kids" they despise-- and vice versa, of course. In fact "cool kids" has almost become almost a synonym for "political journalists" in the liberal blogosphere. Those who use it think they are transcending by poking fun at a high school atmosphere when they are actually wallowing in it. Maureen Dowd's entire reputation was built on treating politics like a replay of high school, and here are all these "critical" cynical hyper-informed left-leaning MoDo-hating blog writers and blog readers adopting her frame for the same reason she did: it's more fun. The liberal blogosphere should be thinking about how it can get one or two of its own--Glenn Greenwald, David Neiwert, Marcy Wheeler--on the McCain bus so as to ask the questions it thinks the press won't ask, and so it can observe up close the love affair it already knows will last--strong and true--throughout the election. That would be real "press politics." That would be interesting. But it prefers, "The media are telling us that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim or Muslim sympathizer" because of the self-infantalizing glow you get when you are done saying it. Oh, and the right is worse, way worse. Also different, very different. But at the moment I am not talking about them. Jay - I was not meaning to imply that you were not recognizing the excesses on both sides of the aisle. The "media" are being pummeled by both sides, that's what I was trying to point out, and this "war" on the media being launched by the left is bound to devolve to some degree into what I see on Huff Post and similar blogs. I completely understand the frustration of trying to play the game the liberal way, with the idea of "truth and justice for all" and "we're all intelligent adults here" as guiding principles. The right has definitely taken advantage of that naivete. It's a replay of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark in which the Egyptian fighter swings his saber about to the pleasure of the crowd, only to have Indiana Jones draw his pistol and shoot him dead--to the great amusement and pleasure of the movie's audience. So what's a real liberal to do? I don't think complaints to the press have worked all that well. Caught in Press Think - for example, Josh Marshall's decision that yes, indeed, we want to cover the horse race - we can't count on them to be as self-critical as they need to be. Without a loud voice debunking early and often, the corrections often get lost. When the MSM is in disarray, their actions cannot be predicted. In fact, NYT seems in panic mode, as evidenced by its hiring of Bill Kristol. MSM's backups, like Huff Post and TPM, have become rabidly partisan (which I why I chose to drop out of the Off the Bus project), perhaps a natural response to fears of another Bush-like administration supported by the MSM. Where are the clear heads with a loud enough voice? Glenn Greenwald and Ana Marie Cox did a Bloggingheads TV segment on McCain, the press, bloggers, the Sedona barbeque, Neil Gabler's op ed, Chuck Todd's remark, everything in my last two posts. Cox: "The relationship that John McCain has with the media is extraordinary... in every sense of the term." Gets pretty heated, and "stuck" several times. I see my role as getting the ideas unstuck in this conversation. I can't listen to this without it taking me three hours, since it is pausing every 10 seconds. Can you summarize, please, about what they get "stuck" on? As the resident right-wing whack-job, I've never heard the whole "Osama is a closeted muslim" argument from anyone. I would think the good Reverend Jeremiah Wright put that idea down for the count, anyway. Obama was better off with the Muslim rumor. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 3, 2008 2:25 PM | Permalink Maureen Dowd's entire reputation was built on treating politics like a replay of high school, and here are all these "critical" cynical hyper-informed left-leaning MoDo-hating blog writers and blog readers adopting her frame for the same reason she did: it's more fun. Also much, much easier than is treating politics as a rational debate. As a preparation for governing, however, it's worthless. Though if you likened the Democratic nomination fight to a competition between high school cliques, you wouldn't be far off. Posted by: Michael Brazier at April 3, 2008 6:11 PM | Permalink Looking at the soft-news, up-close-and-personal profiles during John McCain’s autobiographical tour this week on the network nightly newscasts, it is devilishly difficult to characterize the coverage as displaying either affection or criticism. The reason is that the candidate has constructed his persona so that the latter amounts to the former. The reports both on Tuesday and Wednesday were unequivocal in portraying McCain as a mean-tempered and irresponsible character -- yet those attributes conformed to the candidate’s self-image. Of course the traveling press corps will be vulnerable to accusations of having rolled over for McCain if the candidate believes that publicizing him warts-and-all does nothing but burnish his maverick image. What are they supposed to do in response? Ignore the dirt and dress him up as a Mitt Romneyesque goody two shoes? Perhaps, faced with his self-deprecating “very imperfect public servant” the lefwing blogosphere is advised to tag him as Uriah Heep and go after his unctuousness. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at April 3, 2008 8:10 PM | Permalink Michael Barone, In Terms of Geography, Obama Appeals to Academics and Clinton Appeals to Jacksonians:
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