A man sneaks into the press area at a presidential campaign event, interrupts him with heckling and attempts to make him look unpatriotic, and how does FOXNews frame the story? Obama SKIPPED the pledge of allegiance! He hates America, don’t you know.
Since when is the pledge of allegiance required to be recited before all campaign events?
As has long been noted, voters prefer Democrats on most major issues; this has been the case for years. For that reason, Republicans have largely built White House campaigns around alleged issues of “character.” Especially in the Clinton-Gore era, the mainstream press corps played along, giving loud voice to comic-book claims. (Al Gore was raised at the Ritz!) Today, Obama is said to be haughty, pretentious–much like the others before him.
In the process, punishing narratives have locked into place about those haughty Dems. (John Edwards had a big house!) If you’re didn’t finish fifth from the bottom when you were in college-if you actually know what you’re talking about-you’re slammed for gross condescension. At present, this is how White House elections get decided-and liberal elites have done an extremely poor job explaining this bull-roar to the public.
The practice of jumping between the political and media worlds is not especially uncommon, and journalists routinely leave news outlets to pursue opportunities in professional politics. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, used to be a reporter. Linda Douglass, up until recently employed by National Journal, also joined Obama’s team. In perhaps the most well-known example, Tony Snow left a media job to join Bush’s White House, and then went back to the media.
That said, this is slightly more troubling than most.
Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007, the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain’s presidential campaign.
In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.
Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for “a senior advisory role” in communications.
“He did us the courtesy of considering the offer before politely declining it,” Salter said.
That Fournier would consider a role with the McCain campaign is not especially surprising; his political leanings have been increasingly apparent of late. We learned two weeks ago that Fournier exchanged emails with Karl Rove about Pat Tillman, in which Fournier wrote, “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.” Fournier was also one of the journalists who, at a gathering of the nation’s newspaper editors, extended John McCain a box of his favorite donuts (”Oh, yes, with sprinkles!” McCain said).
But Fournier is the DC bureau chief of the Associated Press. He’s chiefly responsible for directing the AP’s coverage of the presidential campaign. And yet, Fournier’s objectivity is hardly above reproach — he considered an offer to work for one of the two candidates. (Read the rest of this story…)
As I reported earlier, CBS violated their own Standards when it aired the heavily edited interview of John McCain with Katie Couric. A CBS spokesman tried to defend their behavior and told TV Newser:
Of the 14-minute interview, a little less than three minutes was used on the Evening News. A CBS spokesperson tells TVNewser, “As all news organizations do with extended interviews, last night’s Obama and McCain interviews were edited to fit the available time and to give viewers a fair expression of the candidates’ major differences. The full transcript and video were and still are available at CBSNews.com.”
OK, so this person is saying that they edited these segments to ‘ give viewers a fair expression of the candidates’ major differences’.
I’m sorry that is not what CBS did in this case and maybe the spokesman should look at their own standards in editing and then get back to me. Here’s what CBS has to actually say about it: CBS manuel—CBS NEWS STANDARDS….SEC111-5….EDITING:
Editing is essential to the practice of journalism. We must make every effort to ensure that our editing reflects fairly, honestly and without distortion what was seen and heard by our reporters and recorded by our cameras and microphones. The editing process requires careful news judgments geared to the individual facts of each situation.
Interviews are to be edited in a straightforward manner, preserving the sense of the interview. Even a short sound bite should accurately reflect the spirit of the entire interview. An answer may not be taken out of context if the result is to distort the original meaning. If a question to an interview subject is used, the answer must be to that specific question. The question and the answer may be edited, but not in a way that would distort the meaning of either. Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better.
In the editing of an interview, cutaway shots may be used (see Section II-3 for shooting cutaways in the field). But the cutaways must not distort what actually occurred. The correspondent may register appropriate visual expressions, such as smiling at a joke. In all cases, however, the correspondent must be careful that casual expressions do not convey approval or disapproval of what is being said.
The narration leading to a sound bite must reflect the question that elicited the response. For example, we cannot say, in leading into an expert on explosives, “We asked Dr. Doe how the bomb that killed eight people was constructed,” when the original question was, “How do you make a homemade bomb?
Let’s repeat what CBS says is their Standard.
Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better.
This is exactly what CBS did in the segment and I’m not even including the important McCain gaffe that they left out. How can CBS defend the Couric/McCain interview after we read their own guidelines? It’s outrageous behavior. I’m contacting TV Newser for comment now. Contact CBS again and ask for a correction.
UPDATE: I got a call from CBS. They are getting hit with a ton of calls about this story. I’m waiting for a direct response from the Nightly News now.
Well, I’ve finally seen everything. John McCain, who enjoys more media affection than any political figure in recent memory, has taken to complaining that reporters are overly fond of Barack Obama.
Honestly, hearing the McCain campaign whine about someone getting fawning media coverage is a bit like hearing Barry Bonds accuse someone getting an unfair advantage by abusing steroids.
McCain’s Media was out yesterday. Andrea Mitchell actually told MSNBC viewers that Barack Obama gave “fake interviews” because he didn’t cater to her and the traveling road show during his Iraq/Afghan visit. I understand the need to get footage of Obama is her job, but to say they were phony was like saying his trip was like those fake news reports the administration sold to local networks that were presented as real new stories. I wondered if John McCain handled any of his overseas trips in the same way and guess what?
McCain’s visit was not announced and he was believed to have been in the country for several hours before reporters were able to confirm his arrival. It was unclear who he met with and no media opportunities or news conferences were planned.
Let’s Ask Andreaa question. Why wasn’t John McCain attacked for giving “fake interviews” during this trip up until he held a presser in Jordan?
It’s a matter of priorities. Giant stingray caught by a British fisherman or the Iraqi Prime Minister backing the Democratic nominee’s plan for withdrawing from Iraq? Which would you decide needed a big headline?
Don’t worry your beautiful little mind about what’s going on in the world, Fox viewer.
The Associated Press hasn’t been having a good year. It’s been striking, in part because it’s unexpected — the AP has not exactly earned a reputation of being the Fox News of wire services. For the AP to do so many poor reports in such a short time made it seem as if the outlet had undergone some kind of deliberate shift.
[Ron Fournier, the new head of The Associated Press’s Washington bureau] is a main engine in a high-stakes experiment at the 162-year old wire to move from its signature neutral and detached tone to an aggressive, plain-spoken style of writing that Fournier often describes as “cutting through the clutter.”
Fournier calls the trend “accountability journalism” and “liberating … the truth.”
In principle, I couldn’t be more pleased. If the AP wants to bring accountability to campaign coverage, I’d be thrilled.
Like most Republicans these days, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough doesn’t mind taking pot shots at George Bush. Hell, it’s easy to do with the worst president in modern history, but jumping into the anti-Bush column certainly isn’t an act of bravery or a sign that he’s moved to the left. It means he knows which way the political winds are blowing and he needs good ratings. I truly believe Joe is unhappy with the direction the GOP has gone in recent years and angry with W for leading his party to its demise, but at the end of the day, heisRepublicantohismarrow.
Where else could a red-meat, right-wing congressman like Joe Scarborough reinvent himself as the liberal’s favorite talk-show host?
Scarborough admits that he is courting a new constituency. “Once we started Morning Joe, Phil Griffin said to me, ‘You can cut out this regular-Joe crap. Our audience is from Boston to Washington, D.C.’” In fact, he seems to be right at home on the Upper West Side. “The thing I hear all the time,” he says, “when people come up to me on the street, is ‘I love your show,’ and then there’s a hesitancy, and I’ll finish their sentence: ‘And I’m a liberal?’” Scarborough beams, pleased with his own apostasy, before adding, “Republicans aren’t as gracious.”
Wait…wait, here’s the money shot:
“I was totally skeptical, and now I’m totally won over,” says Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin, a political analyst at ABC News. “I was a huge fan of Imus, but Joe has taken that real estate and turned it into something—and I say this without hyperbole—revolutionary. There’s no other show that does what they do. They’ve really found a new form.” Read on…
Because we all know that Mark Halperin, who said John Edwards thought Barack Obama was a p**sy and recommended John McCain use racist attacks against Obama, represents the views of Democrats and liberals everywhere. Either this fluff piece was bought and paid for, or the people at NY Magazine have never heard of people like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow or Amy Goodman. Ok, libs, let’s give them suggestions. Which talk show hosts do you really like?
This 2004 interview should be required viewing for every journalism student. I admit that I had not seen this video until today, but apparently over a million people already have and I hope that millions more will watch it as well. If the American press corps and our corporate media had asked tough questions like this of President Bush and his administration during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that public support for it would have plummeted. This interview was done in ‘04, but was never aired in the U.S., and it’s quite possible that it could have affected the outcome of the presidential election that year. Imagine the outcome if a journalist dared to interview John McCain in this way today.
While surfing the net on ‘Stumble‘, I came across an interview with President Bush on Irish television that caused a bit of a storm in 2004. The interview conducted by the tenacious Carol Coleman of Radio Television Ireland was not aired on American television, and Bush’s press officers apparently complained vociferously about the rigorous questioning.
The video shows Bush at the absolute peak of his arrogance — convinced of his own rhetoric about Iraq, flooded with confidence from international subservience to American power, and high off a crushing military victory that reinforced his childish fantasies of American power and preeminence.
The problem was, Coleman was having none of it, and what transpired was a unique insight into the warped brain of the least respected and most hated president in the history of the United States. Read on…
I can appreciate how difficult it must be for a news outlet like the Associated Press to find new and interesting things to write about when it comes to the presidential campaign. For that matter, I can even appreciate that, once in a while, a story with a human-interest angle might help break things up a bit.
But as part of my ongoing fascination with the AP’s awful coverage of the campaign, I’m afraid this item is just silly.
If the presidential election goes to the dogs, John McCain is looking like best in show.
From George Washington’s foxhound “Drunkard” to George W. Bush’s terriers “Barney” and “Miss Beazley,” pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.
The apparent Democratic nominee Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t have a pet at home. The pet-owning public seems to have noticed the difference. An AP-Yahoo! News poll found that pet owners favor McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain’s corner.
The AP quoted one person saying, “I think a person who owns a pet is a more compassionate person — caring, giving, trustworthy. I like pet owners,” and found another willing to argue on the record that if a person owns a pet that “tells you that they’re responsible at least for something, for the care of something.”
This poll and related story are even worse than the usual palaver. Mark Blumenthal has the definitive take-down.
In March, at a conference of the nation’s newspaper editors, two of the Associated Press’ top political reporters greeted John McCain with a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. One of the reporters was careful to get McCain his favorite kind — “Oh, yes, with sprinkles!” he said — and then passed McCain a cup. “A little coffee with a little cream and a little sugar,” the AP’s Liz Sidoti said.
Since then, I can’t help but notice that the AP hasn’t exactly been neutral. A month ago, the AP ran an article about the “people who might complicate Obama’s campaign,” including Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright. The piece not only read like a slam job, it actually resembled an RNC oppo dump.
Two weeks ago, the same reporter who made sure McCain had coffee to go with his donuts wrote a scathing, 900-word reprimand of Obama’s decision to bypass the public financing system in the general election. It was filled with error of fact and judgment, and ignored the fact that McCain has illegally played fast and loose with the public-financing system this year.
When Obama unveiled his faith-based plan this week, the AP got the story backwards. When Obama talked about his Iraq policy yesterday, the AP said he’d “opened the door” to reversing course, even though he hadn’t.
And the AP’s David Espo wrote a hagiographic, 1,200-word piece, praising McCain’s record of reaching across the aisle. Reading it, one was unsure if maybe the AP had accidentally stuck a byline on a McCain campaign press release — Espo went so far as to laud McCain’s “singular brand of combative bipartisanship.”
For more than a decade, on tobacco, health care, immigration, judicial nominees, creation of a commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and more, McCain has championed high-profile legislation opposed by President Bush or others in his own party.
His record of accomplishment is mixed, yet he has made his willingness to cross the political aisle a central theme in his campaign for the White House in an era when voters are plainly tired of partisan gridlock in the nation’s capital.
(Nicole: MSNBC wasted no time parroting WSJ’s editorial and getting those talking points out there.)
Given John McCain’s record, and rhetoric, Republicans are clearly worried about how voters are going to react to the argument that McCain offers the nation “Bush’s third term.”
In fact, conservatives are so worried about it, the misguided ideologues at the Wall Street Journal editorial page have decided to make a novel argument: it’s Barack Obama, not McCain, who’s actually “running for … Bush’s third term.”
Take the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Last October, while running with the Democratic pack, the Illinois Senator vowed to “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies” that assisted in such eavesdropping after 9/11. As recently as February, still running as the liberal favorite against Hillary Clinton, he was one of 29 Democrats who voted against allowing a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reform of surveillance rules even to come to the floor.
Two weeks ago, however, the House passed a bill that is essentially the same as that Senate version, and Mr. Obama now says he supports it. Apparently legal immunity for the telcos is vital for U.S. national security, just as Mr. Bush has claimed.
Now, I think Obama’s wrong to accept the FISA “compromise,” and have said so on many occasions. But to suggest that Obama’s position brings him into line with Bush/Cheney/McCain is foolish. Indeed, far from conceding that retroactive telecom immunity is “vital for U.S. national security,” Obama actually said the exact opposite, arguing that he still opposes the provision, and vowing to vote for its removal. The Journal used “apparently” to draw the conclusion it wanted to reach, instead of the one supported by reality.
Watching the media react to Gen. Wesley Clark was a sight to be seen. The McCain camp basically just had to sit there and laugh at what was happening. Why bother issuing statements and whatnot when major news analysts like Andrea Mitchell can do their work for them? And this blog post about McCain being a Manchurian Candidate by who else–The Politico—didn’t help either.
Andrea furiously threw it in Clark’s face as if he wrote it himself. She also accused Clark of being part of a coordinated effort to attack McCain’s military record.
Andrea: Well, let me point out that some of the critics from the republican side have pointed out that there seems to be an organized campaign and whether or not you played into this that also on Sunday a liberal blogger…on Americablog wrote…
First of all there’s a factual issue because no one has proved that to my satisfaction that John McCain ever did any propaganda for the enemy…
Then she dishonestly brings up the MoveOn ad to link it to McCain’s military service. That’s just a flat out lie. Shame on you, Andrea. Clark rightfully shot back at Mitchell:
Mitchell: Now, I know that John McCain…
Clark: Andrea, that doesn’t say anything about his military career. That asks about John McCain’s judgment and I think that’s a very legitimate issue…
Andrea, Wesley Clark deserves a little respect, don’t you think? You can be sure John never asked Obama’s campaign if he should write that post. And Obama’s people never asked Webb, MoveOn, Clark or any of us to write or say anything either. The message has been sent, people. Do not mess with McCain. I’m sure John McCain thanks yo
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