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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:
By the way, nearly all the posters here, aside from the admitted "right-wing culture warriors", are firmly on the academic side of this division, as is our host ... and such voters concentrate into quite small parts of the nation, around universities and state capitals. (Hence the reference to geography in the title of Barone's article.) Posted by: Michael Brazier at April 4, 2008 2:47 AM | Permalink Brazier -- except for the inconvenient fact that the university where the academic who hosts this site hangs his hat happens to be in a city that voted for Rodham Clinton, which would make the Big Apple Jacksonian. I suspect that Albany NY, our state capital, is not Obama territory either. Barone has a different idea of this country than I do. The assertion that voters who "place a high value on the virtues of the warrior " are natural Rodham Clinton supporters makes no sense to me. Surely such types are backers of John McCain, otherwise what would be the point of this week's tour to his Mississippi flying field and the Naval Academy? Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at April 4, 2008 8:05 AM | Permalink He means all the warrior Democrats will go to McCain. Obama wins Madison, Berkeley and Cambridge, McCain everywhere else. It's Michael's election map fantasy, Andrew, thrown out there so we can "disagree" with it. And you took the bait. I do, however, like the notion that the lady giving me an eye exam at the Department of Motor Vehicles is wary of the military for grabbing all the honor she thinks is rightfully hers, and will, for that reason, join with the America-hating post-mod literature professor in solidarity against Clinton. Talk about an election year heuristic! Ferdy: Places where Ana Marie Cox and Glenn Greenwald got stuck in their Bloggingheads segment. Whether liking and hanging out with someone and having an adversarial relationship with them are mutually exclusive. Whether the press is "enamored" with McCain, as against just having a close, intimate relationship, and whether this has an effect on their coverage. Whether Greenwald should lighten up about such things as McCain's "base" being journalists since he clearly doesn't get the joke. Whether journalists should be concerned about the "perception" of too much coziness with politicians by showing up at barbeques, Gridiron dinners, social events, or whether they should care only about their coverage, and not worry about perception. The most interesting part for me is when Ana admits that she never heard of and had not considered a suggestion in my last post, which Greenwald shared: Maybe Iran is training Al Qaeda is a “last throes”-type statement, McCain’s way of signaling that he intends to pick up where Bush and Cheney left off in discarding the whole reality-based approach to policy-making. You plant dubious associations in the public mind, and then don’t care if you get called out on them because an image is left on the retina, so to speak. She said it was a fascinating and intriguing theory, but no... never occurred to her. Ana also notes that campaigns up close are a lot less planned and intentional than they seem to be, and so any "specific deceitful plans" that Glenn was suggesting are... out of touch with reality. Lots of things that reporters talk about on television, she said, are distorted by their tendency to put themselves in the frame too much, so as to sound savvy and insidery ("McCain's got enough of that in the bank..."); thus, when Glenn takes those things and reasons from them to what journalists really think he is using distorted evidence-- distorted by TV and by professional narcissism. Ana also said, in the most revealing part: Lately I have a crisis in my approach to my work. The volume of attacks from bloggers has gone way up. I've always felt that I was irreverent, willing to challenge people and piss them off in what I write. But now I'm asking myself, "Do I want to deal with the headache that will come if bloggers decide to gang up on me." Glenn said: Getting attacked in waves online? Tell me about it! But we wouldn't want to go back to one-way media where "feedback" was a letter to the editor. Ana agreed. Thank you very much, Jay. I think it's interesting that bloggers do seem to have gotten her attention, and that Glenn seems to agree. Perhaps the impending "war" may shake a few screws loose from that tight frame journalists have put around their work. Jane Hamsher has said some very harsh things about Ana Marie Cox in the past: I realize this isn't on a par with, you know, being willing to degrade everything you touch by acting like some drunken public slag and treat people like lepers without whom you wouldn't be where you are today, but it will have to do Ironically, what raised the ire displayed in this post (and others) were comments Cox made about an event where bloggers were socializing with politicians and sources. Posted by: kaybeel at April 4, 2008 1:20 PM | Permalink I give the Straight Talk Express about three more weeks. As videotaped falsehoods are going to become standard fodder. This is not any different from the Bumiller exchange. He constructs a false story, says that the listener may disagree, but that's the way it is. Ana Marie Cox has told us that he stands up to this tough questioning well, and sometimes even changes his mind. But this isn't standing up well, at all. He's just lying. And, as always with Senators who've been sitting for a couple of decades, there's a record. This is exactly what handlers tell him will happen. It could, conceivably, have worked without video cameras everywhere. But with video, there is no way for the reporters to soften the story without looking like idiots. Michael Cooper (McC BBQ) ran this part of the quotation: On his campaign plane this week, Mr. McCain said he had changed his mind after learning more about Dr. King. He noted that less than a decade later he bucked some Republicans in his home state, Arizona, to support a state holiday for Dr. King. “Well, I learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history, he deserved to be honored, and I thought it was appropriate to do so,” Mr. McCain said on his plane on Monday. “And my home state of Arizona, I was not proud that we were one of the last states to recognize Dr. King’s birthday as a holiday, and I was pleased to be part of the fight for that recognition.” As Markos points out in the link above, this isn't true. Without the video, this would be the record of the conversation with the reporter, almost certainly left uncorrected--as it's an accurate quotation, that just happens to be not entirely true. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 4, 2008 2:57 PM | Permalink Well, it's for exactly these reasons that most campaign advisers insist on controlling access way more than McCain is now. What if McCain thinks he knows better? 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. I was thinking about this, and the mechanics of it, today. It's out of the question for Glenn or Marcy. It's not what Glenn does and Marcy has a day job. It is what David Niewart does. He does have formal journalistic experience, and he has a subject area of expertise--right wing radicals--that is relevant. My first reaction is that the McCain campaign wouldn't credential someone like that. But, as I thought about it, the financial barriers are a bigger problem. There was a story in the NYT last week that the cost of putting one reporter onto the press plane/bus is on the order of $20,000 a month. Practically speaking, the blogosphere would have to raise around $100,000 to do this. I don't think that's very likely--and I don't think they would be granted access. Is the Nation on the bus? Mother Jones? Posted by: jayackroyd at April 4, 2008 4:19 PM | Permalink Yes, Jay, I agree that this is the question. I think it would have a shot for a candidate who had broadly popular positions--Bill Clinton. But I don't see how McCain can do this. Also, his longstanding tendency to say stuff that isn't true to extricate himself from a difficult line of questioning won't work if it comes out unfiltered. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 4, 2008 4:29 PM | Permalink Hmmmmm. Is Weekly Standard or National Review on Obama's bus? Hillary's? Why not? Posted by: QC Examiner at April 4, 2008 4:48 PM | Permalink Washington Times, Blogger outreach boosts McCain. It also helped that Mr. McCain treated bloggers similar to other reporters, including repeatedly inviting them to travel on the campaign bus with the press, said Matt Lewis, who blogs at TownHall.com. You think he said, "travel with the press on the bus with me, bloggers-- only $20,000." No, he had to extend it to them for free. More about McCain and the right flank blogosphere: "If anybody needed the blogosphere it was McCain," Mr. Lewis said, adding that Mr. McCain recently told bloggers he would continue to give them access throughout the campaign. "He essentially said, 'How could I not — there for a while this summer, you were the only people who talked to me.' "... The situation on the other side: Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama's campaigns returned calls about their Web outreach, though Jerome Armstrong, a liberal blogger at MyDD.com, said Mr. McCain's regular outreach tops anything the two Democrats are doing, and he said it's an approach he would recommend to any candidate. Lots of things that reporters talk about on television, she said, are distorted by their tendency to put themselves in the frame too much, so as to sound savvy and insidery ("McCain's got enough of that in the bank..."); thus, when Glenn takes those things and reasons from them to what journalists really think he is using distorted evidence-- distorted by TV and by professional narcissism. Um. So journalists don't really deep down in their hearts think John McCain is cool and mavericky and an ironic twinkly grandpa and their best buddy but they present him that way anyway because they think it makes them look like "savvy" (urk) insiders? This is the same press that's struggling to appear sober and critical because people are watching? We've seen this movie before. Let me spoil it for you. The cool guy squeaks through because the public somehow didn't pick up on the postmodern nature of the press coverage (you'd be amazed how unironic people who still read the news are about being told the news). Six months after the election, when the warning signs that are being ignored flare up into Really Bad Stuff, Mr. Fineman and Mr. Alter make the rounds of the NPR chat shows and explain to the rapt hosts that absolutely everyone in Washington knew about The President's Issues, and Howie Kurtz explains that he just wasn't sure it was, you know, News, although indeed everybody sorta knew about it. Here's a radical concept: If the journalists covering McCain are giving him a free ride and (to say the least) not extending the same misplaced courtesy to his opponents, who cares why they're doing it? If, as Ms. Cox says, she and her fellow Serious Journalists are putting their thumbs on the scale of a democratic election with the kind of stakes we have in this one because they think it makes them look cool on the teevee, and John McCain's campaign has figured that out (and, you know, I suspect since that nice Mr. McKinnon who worked the same trick for Bush is on board that John McCain's campaign has figured that out), the outcome is precisely the same as if she and her fellow Serious Journalists were completely in the tank for the candidate they're covering. So 'splain me - the press, in this theory, are as shallow as rice paper and their coverage is intended to burnish their own images. This analysis comes from someone whose insights into the candidate we're expected to approach as they were credible, because one of the largest news organizations in the world pays her to cover him. I'm a little lost. At what point do you think bloggers are going to be able to bring sweet reason to bear on this situation? Why on earth, absent unpleasantness, would these people listen? Remember, they're Serious. Jay- Using Peter Daou for blog outreach on Clinton's part, or using a Townhall blogger on McCain's part is not the same thing as putting David Niewart on the Bus. Jerome is a supporter, not a journalist. Now this does raise a more interesting question about the nature of blogging and its relationship to journalism. You mentioned Marcy Wheeler, Glenn Greenwald and David Niewart. All three of them could be characterized as partisans, because they are, in different ways*. They are also dedicated to truth and some principles of government, which I think is why those names came to mind, rather than other popular bloggers. This is in contrast, IMO, to people like Bill Kristol or pretty much the entire right blogosphere which is dedicated to their team winning, even at the expense of truth and principle. A good chunk of Marcy's and Glenn's work is focused on apostate Democrats. But my question is: Do partisan bloggers get to be on the bus with "objective" journalists? They certainly aren't viewed the same way. Peter Daou's role (and his equivalent on the Obama campaign) is providing information and spin to prominent lefty bloggers, as well as crafting an online presence and strategy. This is why I think McCain would refuse to allow these folks on the bus. He would claim, with some justification, that they are operatives rather than journalists. Now, suppose it was one of Josh Marshall's crew on the bus? I don't think the objection would hold. (And I also think some of his fans will be surprised if a Democratic administration comes to town. Because he is not a partisan.) This is a suggestion worth making.
Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 7:05 AM | Permalink thanks for the Greenwald/Cox bloggingheads link, Jay. I generally avoid that format (including the option of playing it 1.4 times faster is a godsend), but this was fascinating in a "rubbernecking a Cox train wreck" kind of way. Not to get all meta on you, but Cox seems to function as the "received Super-ego" of the media. She's not really a reporter herself -- she was hired away from Wonkette to jumpstart Swampland for Time Inc., and wound up in a "reporter" role because of cutbacks at Time. (Swampland never generated the kind of traffic that justified Cox's salary). And when you compare her credentials to those of other reporters assigned to the campaign from major media outlets, the contrast is startling -- Cox is pretty much on the level of a High School newspaper editor, compared to her peers. So when Cox talks about the press as a member of "the press", she doesn't bring the kind of perspective that people who have been writing about politics for decades can bring. Instead, what we get is a distillation of how the rest of the media sees itself -- Cox literally personifies the people 'on the bus', especially those travelling with McCain. And the results are fascinating. Cox asserts that her relationship with Greenwald is an appropriate template for the relationship between a reporter and his/her subject. She draws an equivalence between Al Gore "joking about inventing the internet" and McCain joking about the "media being his base." And when confronted with the media's own criticism of McCain coverage, Cox asserts that [paraphrase] "none of those people know what they are talking about" -- going so far as to say that Ruth Marcus was unqualified to comment on the coverage because Marcus had spent only a day or two covering McCain. As one of the Swampland originals (now banned -- imagine that! ;-) ), it was always obvious that Cox was completely out of her depth when trying to be 'serious', and was generally tone-deaf when she wasn't "being serious". But Cox is also a magnified personification of another aspect of the "political media" -- the fact that campaign coverage is provided by "political media", people who know a lot about how "politics" work, but it seems like that is all they know about. As a result, we get assertions from Cox and those she personifies that the access the press gets to McCain gives them the chance to ask "tough questions". The questions may be "politically" tough, but the questioners have little or no substantive knowledge of the issues that they are asking about, and seem incapable of (or unwilling to) truly challenge a candidate. (Cox once put up a video of herself and other reporters asking McCain 'tough questions' about Iraq -- it was glaringly obvious that none of these reporters really understood the full context of their own questions, let alone McCain's answers. And when a reporter did challenge McCain, he shrugged off the challenge by acknowledging the reporter's point, and then going on to give the exact same spin -- and McCain gets away with it.) Posted by: p.lukasiak at April 5, 2008 8:43 AM | Permalink p.l is right on the button here. Cox was lamenting how difficult it is to get McCain off his talking point of not flip-flopping on torturing people, when he voted against requiring the CIA to comply with the Army interrogation manual. The response McCain was giving was right out of Scotty McClellan's textbook--repeating a unresponsive answer. I still think McCain can't keep this up--and if Michael Scherer's report that in his last two days on the Bus there was no open access (I was with McCain for two days, Wed. and Thu., during which he did not hold a press avail or gaggle.) So it may be ending already. But the videos are gonna kill him. Michael Cooper reported on McCain lying during Straight Talk access regarding his record on MLK birthday holidays. Someone I spoke to who doesn't read blogs said that McCain came off badly. But I thought Cooper pulled punches, and that the following day's story from Bumiller was gentler still. But on the video you can see him clearly dissembling. One of the reasons the Broders claim to love him is that he panders badly, so they discount the lies, knowing that it's just pandering. But video of him lying, badly and obviously is gonna hurt him. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 10:18 AM | Permalink I think Jay is defining/encouraging one kind of conversation, and it's bloggers-to-journalists-to-bloggers. Which has its merits. It's a constructive-creative-press-criticism conversation. In comments we've got some refining of that goal: It should take into account affecting the institutions, since they're the entities that create the press context. But I'm more persuaded by Paul, and I'm more interested in the unmediated conversation that is taking place between bloggers and "the culture," an admitted vague term that I'll use despite not being able to define it fully. That conversation is about what things "mean," about how to get results directly. Liberal bloggers at this point strike me as more interested in making sure a Democrat wins in November. Influencing/improving press coverage is mostly just a means to that end for them now, not a goal of its own. I'm less interested in the press-criticism conversation because I've come to the conclusion that our current journalism-industrial-complex (Seth Godin talks about the TV-industrial-complex, and I consider this a subset of Godin's idea) is now irrevocably broken. You can't reform it as currently constituted. You just work out strategies for dealing with it as it declines towards its inevitable event horizon. Jon Taplin, in writing about economics and politics, has been using a word that I really like: Interregnum. It refers to the gap between the death of one order and the beginning of the next, and I can't think of a more obvious example than the current status of the news media. The for-profit print and TV business models that generate sufficient revenues to pay for "professional journalism" are declining rapidly in the face of new competition, but the incoming era hasn't yet figured out a sustainable financial model to replace the outmoded existing system. We all know one has to end and the other has to begin, but the practical answers elude us. Which suggests this interregnum will include a rather traumatic thud at some point. This discussion is part of that thud. If that's your outlook, do you put your energy into reforming a profession and an industry that are headed toward forced reorganization? Or do you focus on your desired outcomes and get to work on them directly? One conversation presumes the best way to improve the outcome is to influence the media to produce better results. The other treats news media as a tool that can be discarded. Then discards it. Dan-- It's more complicated than that. The print media has not yet responded to changes in information access. It's silly to have dozens of reporters following a candidate around in NH or IA giving the same stump speech. It costs a fortune and create incredibly repetitive stories across outlets. This is seen most clearly in the McCain BBQ stories. There was literally nothing to report other than McCain's energy, the setting and the recipe. Dutifully, a dozen reporters wrote that same story. (TIME and Newark Journal-Ledger didn't have a story. The NYT just ran a squib in a campaign update, as did others. But there were a dozen nearly identical stories.) Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 10:42 AM | Permalink Julia: Thanks for stopping by. I cannot dissent from a thing you wrote. I think what Cox said about TV and narcissism was true, but damning. She tried to present it as true, and so not damning. Greenwald was sayin; "Damn, if journalists themselves are explaining how they give McCain an unfair advantage, why do I have to prove it? and why are you, Ana, resisting it?" That's funny. Julia asks, "At what point do you think bloggers are going to be able to bring sweet reason to bear on this situation?" I don't. It's an unreasonable situation. What I said in this post is not, "journalists will listen to reason, so reason with them, bloggers." I can see how the last line of my post might suggest that, but no. I said this was a fluid--not reasonable--situation and there were some openings. Declaring war isn't going to help us understand them. I also said that if McCain goes with radical openness and the Democratic nominee does not, or can't, this would be a significant difference. To me the liberal blogosphere is crazy not to try to get one of its big bloggers on the bus with McCain. (And if you already know it would not work before you try than you know too much.) If it was turned into a high profile event and the effort failed, it would still succeed, by showing what McCain is afraid of, or at least make him explain why he can't straight talk liberal writers as well as conservative ones. The guy thinks he can handle anyone because there isn't anyone he can't out-honor. Don't you get that yet? Here's the quote I would use in the first post announcing a drive to get Niewert (let's say) on the bus: As I have done my entire career, I will make my case to every American who will listen. I will not confine myself to the comfort of speaking only to those who agree with me. I will make my case to all the people. I will listen to those who disagree. I will attempt to persuade them. I will debate. And I will learn from them. Paul: You were banned from Swampland? Jeez-us. I think Cox deserves a lot of credit for Swampland. It's got more balls than other Big Media political blogs, with unmoderated comments and writers who occasionally write back. However, as I watch her position herself and make fun of the bloggers while she makes fun of the candidates and joins the smart set on television, I see her angling for the slot MoDo and Dana Millbank grabbed for themselves. The surface-skating opinion columnist with no ideology, no deep beliefs, allegedly tuned into the "hyprocrisy" part of politics but always, always, havin' fun with it. A post-ideological opinionator has to surive on style, which inevitably turns smug and annoying. Remember, MoDo came to prominence at the Times for her "voice." The only thing that prevents her from going further on television is that she has a terrible speaking voice. Cox is better looking, better voice, and totally comfortable with "everyone's a hypocrite, isn't this funny?" journalism. Jay, no offense, but it's kind of irritating how you complain about how the Left Blogosphere has a reductive view of the complexities of professional journalism, but at the same time you seem to be making lots of generalizations about "the liberal blogosphere" and what "it" prefers: 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. Isn't that the same long distance psychoanalysis of motives you just said bloggers shouldn't engage in when it comes to reporters? Maybe Eli was legitimately annoyed that the WaPo had legitimized a preposterous smear? And that once that cat's out of the bag, the damage is done, no matter what The Media does next? And haven't you just picked up on one post and then extended it into a generalization which doesn't represent the complexity of the whole? Moreover, I myself think it would be swell if all McCain bus reporters thought "I'll show those wicked bloggers, I'll start being critical of McCain just to show them wrong!" After all, aren't you doing something similar (or exactly the same) when it comes to Eli, making an exaggerated claim as to motive in order to influence later behavior towards what you see as a better outcome? Jay, I agree that a blogger should try to get on the bus. I do think Niewart or Paul Kurtz of TPM are the best candidates. I am going to drop a note to Josh suggesting he think about this. And Niewart. p.l, I must not have been around when the banning happened. I signed on one day, and you were gone. I'd gotten the impression you'd opened a back channel to Tumulty. What happened? Did some comment about Klein cause it? Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 11:15 AM | Permalink Isn't that the same long distance psychoanalysis of motives you just said bloggers shouldn't engage in when it comes to reporters. Point taken. Eli's statement is still idiotic-- and false. I have no idea what his motives were. One comment cannot represent "the blogosphere." To respond to what Dan said upthread, here's Michael Scherer of Time magazine at Swampland trying to breach the divide between bloggers & their readers and journalists & their institutions. And also adding some data for this thread. "[McCain] has traditionally been far more open than anyone else, but right now he is campaigning in a more traditional mode." Seems like a story to me. I don't think there is any way to navigate between "you want us to be partisan," vs. "no, we just want you to do your job." That's as far as that conversation is going to go. The gulf will remain. An idea that mediates between them is the "innocence agenda," which I tried to explain in my "Beast Without a Brain" piece. But I'm afraid that idea is never going to be accepted by either bloggers or journalists. (Interesting list of what Scherer has actually covered last few months.) Okay, Scherer into the breach: Calm down now. I have been on a plane, stuck in southern thunderstorms. (Am stuck at ATL now.) How could I foresake you all, my commenters, my Greek chorus, the voices from my nightmares? I'm not messing with you. I am not ignoring you. I am not retaliating, Cliff. I have not changed the way I do my job, James. Swampland can be annoying as hell, but in its own way it's doing something to the people who write it. One would hope, though, that seeing the mouth-breathing rightwingers cheering him on might give Michael pause. What's your explanation, Jay, for the shortage of thoughtful, articulate conservatives in comment threads? There are a couple at Swampland, but it's a rare breed. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 1:04 PM | Permalink What's your explanation, Jay, for the shortage of thoughtful, articulate conservatives in comment threads? I'm not touching that one. Why not, Jay? C'mon, tell us how jayackroyd's comment is tied to journalism instead of partisan, trolling, flamebait. Explain how jayackroyd's comment isn't way worse or very different from what I read on the right-side of the blogosphere. Don't duck the "tough" questions, Jay! :-) Well said. I think your idea of getting a blogger on the Straight Talk Express is excellent. You actually just missed a great opportunity! I don't think it is as clear that it succeeds if it fails. Obama is running ads right now highlighting his, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America." McCain could easily use the blogger as a challenge to Obama (or Clinton, but Clinton's more likely - I think - to take on a righty blogger). I would also reiterate that access has payed off during this primary: Obama's Rezko Narrative and Hillary, reassessed. I can still remember the big deal when bloggers were "credentialed" for the 2004 campaigns. Getting on the bus seems a reasonable next step. Hey, I registered for that McCain sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Seriously, Tim, do you have an answer? Go over to the Swampland site, and look at the Tumulty thread. The difference in thoughtfulness of comment is palpable. There are a couple of regular rightwing commenters over there who do engage in of polite, rational discussion. And there a couple of troll-like posters on the left (although even they, I'd argue, are more articulate and spell better.) But the ratio isn't close to even. Do you know why this is? I used to help host a discussion site, back before "blog" was coined. We did, for a while, have interesting, civil discussions with people from both sides of the spectrum. Well, mostly civil. AceofSpades was a regular, and his bit doesn't include civility. But many people found his character amusing, and he's not stupid. The failure to find WMD in Iraq essentially killed the right wing participation off. But it was there before. Now it seems very rare to me. Can you recommend a place where I would find this? Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 2:50 PM | Permalink I wouldn't recommend Time's Swampland for intelligent commentary, much less debate. I'll highlight a portion of StewieZ's summary of the Swampland collective: We respect what our allies in the press have done to help our cause but have to occasionally take corrective action when one of the sheep strays (like on this thread). That is our worldview. If you don't like it go find a conservative blog but I promise you it will not have the important stories that make a difference like the ones here written by journalists who are felt by people in power to be very important players, and the importance of the bloggers in the grand scheme of things is only sharpened and augmented by the craftsmanship and high intelligence of what most of the commenters (particularly the regulars like stuart_zechman, JJ, acidJ, Paul Dirks, Elvis, and HH) have to say.I no longer comment at many left-wing sites where I once participated. There's a reason. It's the same reason Jay won't touch your comment. The political press should be delegitimized. The country would be better off if they ceased to broadcast and publish. There are reporters who do great things. But the overwhelming Washington, D.C. coverage & the campaign coverage is: (1) relentlessly trivial; (2) does more to influence and distort the race than to cover it through it's horse race obsession, echo chamber effect, and constant insults to the intelligence of the public. The majority of political "news" coverage on the cable networks & even written sources is worthless, or harmful. It would be better to simply print transcripts of what the candidates say, summaries of roll call votes, transcripts of debates, poll numbers, election results, delegate counters, etc. and leave the analysis to bloggers. Stenography would be a vast improvement over the echo chamber. I reached my wits' end this week with the comparative coverage of the torture memo & Obama's bowling score. The political press deserves to be delegitimized. The response to this is usually: but, the blogs don't do original reporting. This is absolutely correct. James Risen, Dana Priest, Ray Bonner, Carlotta Gall, Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, McClatchy's Baghdad Bureau, various foreign correspondents--there are a sig. # of real reporters doing excellent work & we need them. We need more of them. But they are barely in the same business in the campaign press, which does no worthwile research & reporting & actively harms the country and the political process. Calling them both "reporters" & "journalists" insults the good ones and is an inaccurate description of the bad ones. They're not in the same business, not remotely. Your average campaign & Washington repoerter is closer to Matt Drudge than to a foreign correspondent covering war zones. Posted by: Katherine at April 5, 2008 3:03 PM | Permalink Marshall's Election Central site is the first lousy thing I've seen on TPM--they've fallen in the same trap re: the primary that the mainstream press does for the general: they don't want to appear to take sides, so they end up obsessing about useless horse race trivia. Getting one of them on the McCain bus would be a much, much, much better use of resources. Posted by: Katherine at April 5, 2008 3:07 PM | Permalink Katherine, re: deligitimize No. Devalue. Alright, well, some of you guys have to decide what you want more-- dialogue with those you call the MSM (where, for example, if a blogger asks for a statement a news executive will give a statement) or do you want the opportunity for denunciation at close range?The same holds true for politicians, as well as journalists. On another note, the latest manifestation of the press being in the tank for McCain is not just the failure to ask questions, but reporting seriously the McCain camp's indignant response to perfectly ordinary political discourse. Obama's apparently not allowed to say McCain wants 100 years of war in Iraq even though McCain can say the Democrats want to surrender. Obama & Clinton supporters aren't allowed to call McCain a "warmonger"; that's treated as equivalent to the Muslim smear against Obama. Marc Ambinder, who's usually a tiny bit less stupid than most of the horse race crew, asks seriously if its "out of bounds" for Elizabeth Edwards to mention the word "cancer" in discussions of how McCain has no real health care plan to speak of. Also: their portrayal of him as a stalwart hero on torture without so much as mentioning his voting record, ever, is infuriating. And if someone calls him on this, they're all: "does criticism of torture survivor John McCain cross the line"? Posted by: Katherine at April 5, 2008 3:12 PM | Permalink "Alright, well, some of you guys have to decide what you want more-- dialogue with those you call the MSM (where, for example, if a blogger asks for a statement a news executive will give a statement) or do you want the opportunity for denunciation at close range?" If access requires us not to point out how atrocious they are, what's the point? They don't respond to basic factual corrections. As far as political coverage goes, the MSM is not going to improve through "dialogue"; we simply need to start replacing it. Posted by: Katherine at April 5, 2008 3:15 PM | Permalink And, Tim, can you please state this reason for your non-participation? I know why I don't participate at sites like LGF. My presence is not permitted. But I do not understand why there is such a disparity in content quality on MSM sites. It's been disappointing to me that places like TPM have devolved into single note commentary, to the point where the Democratic camps are in separate blog spaces. But for MSM sites, where content is not directed to one side or the other (or at least not so much so that either side is satisfied with them), there really is a content quality disparity. I'm honestly curious. If you don't want to reply publicly, you can email me at jay@ackroyd.org. Feel free to use a dummy account. I won't be offended if you do. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 3:22 PM | Permalink Swampland can be annoying as hell, but in its own way it's doing something to the people who write it. I don't think that Swampland is doing anything to Scherer -- he came from Salon, and was used to reader interaction/comments on his work. (a lot of the Swampland regulars didn't get Scherer at first -- they read him within the context of expectations set by Carney/Tumulty/Klein/Cox, and was quite viciously attacked for his first post because they weren't familiar with Scherer's work, and didn't get the irony that he used.) Nor do I think that the experience has changed C/T/K/C at all. Except for Tumulty, none of the originals (nor Newton-Small) seem like they really want to hear what their audience is saying, and while I think that Tumulty wants to listen, the cognitive dissonance that results from the stark contrast between the perception of her readers, and her press peers (i.e. the people she spends hours upon hours interacting with every day) prevents any substantive change in her reporting (her blogging has gotten better, but we don't want better mainstream media bloggers, we want better MSM reporters.) Paul: You were banned from Swampland? Jeez-us. yeah. imagine that! Me, of all people, being banned from a blog! ;-) ******** I'm not going to discuss my banning here -- its off topic (as much as I love talking about ME!) and there are aspects that I can't/won't discuss publicly. But if you want to know what happened, write to me at plukasiak at comcast dot net, and I'll fill you in. oh, and PS... just for the hell of it, why not annoy AMC by copying my comment about her talkinghead appearance in one of her threads! ;-) Posted by: p.lukasiak at April 5, 2008 3:43 PM | Permalink I can still remember the big deal when bloggers were "credentialed" for the 2004 campaigns. Getting on the bus seems a reasonable next step. Yeah. I was part of it. Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials (PressThink, July 7, 2004) No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing. The blogs come at this fresh. I'm going. I was on that bus. It was educational. McCain could easily use the blogger as a challenge to Obama or Clinton to take on a righty blogger. Just so. Which is why I have tried in two posts to infuse online discussion of McCain and the press with the unknowns about Obama involving journalists, access and openness. I should probably do a separate post on this. Play your scenario out for a bit Liberal bloggers: Hey, why can't we ride the McCain bus? And thus for a moment bloggers vs. journalists actually is over, while left and right agree :-) Now from my point of view: radical openness is exactly what Obama should do. I think he's the kind of candidate who would see that, but how I do I know...? I don't until he is forced to decide. Hillary is not for that, has never been about that, has 101 problems with going in that direction. On the other hand, she did it, in a way, with the Post-Tribune and Scaife. Michael Scherer tells me that press availability for McCain sometimes looks like every other campaign. Maybe he's backing away from radical openness. Jayackroyd said it cannot last. I still believe in it, and hope for a comeback. I've been a PressThink reader since the beginning, but there are so many nooks, crannies, streets and alleys, it is easy to get stranded on a PressThink cul-de-sac. But here's what I'm thinking: The best thing for all of us would be for jayackroyd's fevered dreams to come true. Polls, including Pew, indicate that the American public doesn't trust the establishment press and thinks they are biased to the left. So I say let's have people like Glenn (Sockpuppet) Greenwald write press releases for the establishment press which would be repeated word for word, so the rest of us can just dismiss them as left-wing shills and move on to other sources of information. jayackroyd and his ilk aren't interested in improving journalism across the board---they want the press to bludgeon McCain and give Hillary/Obama a pass. Remember Evan Thomas' pledge that the favorable coverage in the press of Kerry and negative coverage of Bush would add 15 points and win POTUS for Kerry? What a hoot----people are smarter than the press! Who knew? Not jayackroyd, it seems. Posted by: QC Examiner at April 5, 2008 3:51 PM | Permalink And if you want encylopedia quality example of a trollish comment that is flame bait for culture warriors, seen as flame bait, followed by the burst into flames itself by one of the trolling warrior class... then click: and here. That's why I said I wasn't touching it. And I recommend the same for you. Katherine: Thanks for your comments, which I found quite incisive. Jay Rosen, I like that scenario, and would enjoy a separate post about "bloggers on the bus." It would also be interesting to weave into that scenario your in-progress assessment of "Off the Bus." Jay Ackroyd, I think you're asking me two different questions. One question is about blogs and the other is about "MSM sites." I'll answer the latter first, because it's easier. I have not participated on MSM blog sites. They were late to the game and never attracted my interest. The authors of MSM blog sites rarely participate in their own comment sections. The comment section seems more like a string of letters to the editor than conversation. I've limited my participation to blogs where I have a fair chance at a conversation. I have not been banned by a blog. I generally stop participating in the comments to a blog when I'm being driven off by a significant number of the other commenters with partisan attacks. In that situation, there's no reason to stay. Katherine: If access requires us not to point out how atrocious they are, what's the point? They don't respond to basic factual corrections. As far as political coverage goes, the MSM is not going to improve through "dialogue"; we simply need to start replacing it.This is exactly where the Right was 30 years ago. I would note that over those 30 years, they have been successful at building up their own media. But for all their success, they haven't replaced anything, and neither will the Left. I thought Alterman did a pretty good job of capturing the changes in the mediasphere. I don't know if the Left will be able to do the same, but we may be witness the start of a generational project. OK, here's what I've distilled from this post and thread: The left wing blogosphere believes the establishment press belongs to them. The right wing blogosphere doesn't. Tell me if I'm wrong---in 50 words or less. Posted by: QC Examiner at April 5, 2008 5:19 PM | Permalink You're neither wrong nor right but a troll. Eight words. I am asking no one to respond. And if you persist, I will kill your post and all meta-posts by you that follow. Okey-dokey Jay. Posted by: QC Examiner at April 5, 2008 5:43 PM | Permalink Thank you, Tim. I'm sorry Jay. Tim, it's interesting you mention Alterman. He and Tucker Carlson had a very civilized and thoughtful debate on the stuck points, as Jay calls such things, in the left vs right media. It's somewhere deep in the politicstv archives. If I can find it, I'll post a link. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 5:46 PM | Permalink Thanks for your coperation, CQ and JA. All would benefit from my NYU colleague Clay Shirky's famous talk, A Group is its Own Worst Enemy. Again, I am NOT talking about the real reporters. I am talking about what passes for "journalism" re: D.C. and the campaigns. The echo chamber, the Village, the horse-race-obsessed call it what you will. They may work for some of the same organizations, but they're not doing the same work as the investigate reporters and foreign correspondents. These debates about the media always lump together "journalists" obsessing about whether Obama's low bowling score and John Edwards' haircut put them out of touch with Real Americans (TM) versus actual journalists who are reporting from Iraq, uncovering documents, doing actual policies & investigative work--it distorts the whole debate. And it's odd, because it's so much easier to do half-decent political coverage than to cultivate classified sources or travel to a warzone. Lots of liberal bloggers are talented enough to ask better questions on the campaign bus & write about the answers, & to give better coverage of campaigns' policy proposals, various public events, public documents, transcripts of press conferences, etc. They're doing it already. It requires talent but the barriers to entry & needed resources aren't prohibitive. We can't compete with the Dana Priests of the world; we can only give their stories the prominence they deserve when the cable news networks ignore them. Posted by: katherine at April 5, 2008 6:44 PM | Permalink Katherine-- One of the points that one of Swampland Pauls has made is that coverage of the campaigns might be improved by rotating reporters on various issue beats, like the Supreme Court or the EPA or DoD, into the campaigns to get better questions. p. luk above points out that one of the reasons McCain can skate on so many issues is that the horse race/process reporters on the trail can't challenge him with facts and history. This is a problem. Now, again, the laziness question raises its head. That Ana Marie Cox would tell Greenwald that she had not heard the theory that McCain was lying, rather than misspeaking, when conflating al qaeda and Iran means that she was not reading her own comments thread. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 7:31 PM | Permalink It's odd, because it's so much easier to do half-decent political coverage than to cultivate classified sources or travel to a warzone. Lots of liberal bloggers are talented enough to ask better questions on the campaign bus & write about the answers, & to give better coverage of campaigns' policy proposals, various public events, public documents, transcripts of press conferences, etc. They're doing it already.... Yes, Katherine, but can they do it while also advertising their political innocence? (No, they can't.) While also persuading themselves, their bosses and their owners that they have no politics that comes through in their coverage? (Good luck!) While also staying within consensus narratives in so far as these can be discerned by their editors? (Doubtful.) While also sounding cool and detached and "expert" in politics, so as to suggest why they are doing this and someone else who can read a bar graph isn't? (Tricky, very tricky.) And yet these are the institutional facts of life that pro journalists conceal from themselves and bloggers can either ignore or scoff at. Many of the "stuck points" arise from these pressures that are neither secret not acknowledged because it would be inconvenient for all. This is why I liked Ché Pasa's comments at Firedoglake: When we have that authority and the ability to pay them, we will also be able to tell them what their "job" is and enforce it. Until then, things will stay just as they are. He followed it up with: This means war! If it was turned into a high profile event and the effort failed, it would still succeed, by showing what McCain is afraid of, or at least make him explain why he can't straight talk liberal writers as well as conservative ones. The guy thinks he can handle anyone because there isn't anyone he can't out-honor. Don't you get that yet? I do, actually. It's part of what disturbs me about this campaign (and pretty much all of the campaigns of my adult life.) I don't see how far that lone blogger would be able to get their message out without institutional support, but I concede that watching how things have played out since I've been watching has probably instilled a certain amount of learned helplessness about working within the system to effect change. I also know some folks who have tried it, and the bubbles have pretty much stopped coming up. I don't disrespect journalism as a profession. I think that there are journalists out there doing magnificent work under really difficult conditions. I think one of those difficult conditions is the propensity of media organizations to reward Maureen Dowd and Dana Milbank (and I actually think Milbank could be a fine journalist if he weren't rewarded for being a cheap one) instead of the reporters doing magnificent work. All the more honor to the good guys, whose work I'd be SOL without. Still, I didn't choose the sparkle ponies to be the public face of the press in this country. It sucks that honorable journalists have to pay the price for their employers' poor taste and judgment, but we live in a big picture world. While I try to draw the distinction between people who perform journalism and people who play journalists on TV, it's kind of hard to find a term to describe people who call themselves reporters and who produce most of the news that most people see that isn't, well, reporters. I'm truly sorry that's so, and I expect that there are reporters out there whose work I admire who have reason to be terribly offended by what I write. That sucks too, and I regret it, but I'm kind of short on language that I can use to describe the elephant in the living room. The existence of the phrase "Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Maureen Dowd" limits my options when it comes to making distinctions that aren't parsed into incoherence. Which, of course, could easily have to do with my own lack of skill, but I'd gladly snatch up a better frame if someone would come up with one. I suspect the professionals have a similar difficulty when they're writing about bloggers. FWIW. Julia-- The good ones do get awards. Charlie Savage. Risen and Lichtblau. They know who is doing the good work. This makes me want to reinforce Jay's reference to Che Pasa at FDL. Che Pasa sounded off at Greenwald's site today, on the same point. But they don't get to this position on their own, as independent actors, doing what they do because they are individually stupid, lazy, reactionary fools (which they may be, but it's irrelevant to what they are doing and why they are doing it.) Posted by: jayackroyd at April 5, 2008 8:36 PM | Permalink Obama's apparently not allowed to say McCain wants 100 years of war in Iraq even though McCain can say the Democrats want to surrender. What McCain really said was that we can expect to have in Iraq for 100 years something very like what we've had in Japan for 60 years, and South Korea for 50 -- which is not war, or anything like it. So no, Obama should not be allowed to say McCain wants a century of war in Iraq. On the other hand, if you can find a meaningful distinction between the policy Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (both Democrats of some prominence) want us to follow in Iraq, and surrender, I will be grateful, and surprised. The political press should be delegitimized. The country would be better off if they ceased to broadcast and publish. The right-wing culture warriors will welcome your assistance in this noble endeavor. Posted by: Michael Brazier at April 5, 2008 8:39 PM | Permalink The existence of the phrase "Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Maureen Dowd" limits my options ... Actually, Julia, MoDo won her Pulitzer as an op-ed columnist for commentary on Bill and Monica, not for reporting. I don't see how far that lone blogger would be able to get their message out without institutional support. I didn't mean that a lone blogger on the McCain bus would change the system, "solve" the problem of lousy campaign coverage or right the wrongs that people in the liberal blogosphere see. But it would perhaps allow for a view of the McCain campaign's relationship with the press that users of those blogs trust. I also know some folks who have tried it, and the bubbles have pretty much stopped coming up. I think you write extremely well. This is a problem. Now, again, the laziness question raises its head. I think its more than just laziness, but I'm not sure how to describe it. Suffice it to say that Clinton releaaed a detailed proposal on the mortgage crisis on March 24. At Swampland, no one posted about it beforehand, even though it had been announced that the proposal would be forthcoming. Nor did anyone mention it on March 24 or 25 -- but there were multiple references to her Bosnia "gaffe" and who was releasing what tax returns when, plus Jay Newton-Small trashing Clinton for her comments on Wright, campaign Mad-Libs, and David Patterson's private life. You have six professional journalists who are covering the campaign and/or frequently commenting on it, and none of them saw fit to even mention Clinton's policy proposal. This is more than laziness, its the willful avoidance of substance, and the elevation of the trivial. Posted by: p.lukasiak at April 5, 2008 8:41 PM | Permalink See Greenwald today, Paul? Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days: One path I would recommend for the liberal blogosphere would be a shaming campaign that keeps a close watch on these kinds of numbers. PressThink: "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? Digby: "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." Katherine: "The political press should be delegitimized. The country would be better off if they ceased to broadcast and publish." Michael: "The right-wing culture warriors will welcome your assistance in this noble endeavor." My point exactly. They are employees who must follow the standards set by their employers or they are out of a job. Unlike a progressive blogger, who can write and speak as he or she sees fit. Whenever and however the spirit of righteousness moves them. (I assume most right wing bloggers are on the payrolls of Scaife, Moon, AEI, RNC and the like, or at least want to be, and therefore are as bound to the standards their employers set as any mass media clown you care to name.) Of course, if Che Pasa took the trouble to check his assumptions, rather than simply asserting them, he'd have some right to the name of journalist. As far as I know, most right-wing bloggers are on nobody's payroll save their own, even the prominent ones. Pajamas Media, for instance, is a private project of Roger L. Simon's. And I don't suppose it occurred to Che Pasa to ask who pays the operating expenses of Dailykos, or the Huffington Post -- though those two sites are rather more influential among left-wing bloggers than any single site is on the right. Posted by: Michael Brazier at April 5, 2008 9:28 PM | Permalink Um, DailyKod and Huffington Post operate at a profit. Advertisers cover their operating expenses. One of the elements important in the, at least, dimunition of the "liberal media" has been the willingness of right wing angels to fund publications that lose money, from the NY Post to the National Review. If you were to read Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, you would see how the conservative project to gain a louder, more prominent voice in the mainstream media was organized and executed. Of course, the most influential element on the right is Drudge, which also operates, as far as I know, at a profit. There is no way, though, that Drudge's primary legitimizing conduit on the web, Politico, is operating at a profit, and it is funded by a right wing moneybags type. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 6, 2008 7:39 AM | Permalink Jay Ackroyd, Check out the profitability of Harper's, Mother Jones and the Nation. The assumption by Che Pasa about "right wing bloggers" is lazy and stupid (but feels good!). Jay Rosen, re: "innocence" and employers If I have any advantage in all this, it is that I really am non-partisan, although zealots clearly have a hard time believing that. But being non-partisan does give a certain perspective -- it puts you in the position of a man who has made no bets nonetheless intently watching a horse race unfold. He sees things the bettors miss. Yes, Tim, Harpers is even a non-profit. And I agree that Che Pasa's assertion is unprovable. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 6, 2008 10:30 AM | Permalink What Che "assumed" about the funding of right wing blogs is, in the main, sloppy and incorrect. I will stipulate that so it doesn't take ten more posts. Lovelady's "also adds another layer of indifference" adds another (rhetorical) question for Katherine, who wrote: Lots of liberal bloggers are talented enough to ask better questions on the campaign bus & write about the answers, & to give better coverage of campaigns' policy proposals, various public events, public documents, transcripts of press conferences, etc. They're doing it already. But could they do it while also projecting an air of indifference about the outcome? That's hard. I really think this is a key to understanding the struggle that gave rise to this post. A mainstream political reporter isn't going to say, "well, I could have done that story you want done, but it would be hard to do so while appearing to be indifferent to the outcome, so I decided not to." Or: "how do you expect me to ask that question and also project an air of political innocence?" Or: "Don't you understand that the horse race allows us to appear immersed but not engaged and that works perfectly for us?" These factors that have valence for the press but no real validity for bloggers and their readers drop out of the discussion altogether. They affect everything and they are real and present to no one. The left blogosphere is expressly partisan. This would require the examination of the larger question of whether there is anything inappropriate about granting expressly partisan people access. The dueling claims of inaccuracy and bias is attributed to unexpressed partisanship, on the part of reporters from the right and on the part of management from the left. In Sedona (which is my only source list of people on the bus) in increasing degree of partisanship were folks from the WSJ, FOX News, and the Weekly Standard. Meckler is from the news side of the WSJ, which one could not really call particularly partisan. But the other two certainly fill the bill. So partisanship vs feigned or actual indifference, is not the issue here. Posted by: jayackroyd at April 6, 2008 11:14 AM | Permalink "well, I could have done that story you want done, but it would be hard to do so while appearing to be indifferent to the outcome, so I decided not to." Is this what led Keller to kill The Risen/Lichtblau wiretapping story before the 2004 election? That he could not run it and still appear indifferent to the outcome? And that the administration's pushing so hard to kill it made that manifest? (And, btw, the trouble with this is that not running or writing a story can also be an expression of concealed partisanship.) Posted by: jayackroyd at April 6, 2008 11:19 AM | Permalink Is this what led Keller to kill The Risen/Lichtblau wiretapping story before the 2004 election? That he could not run it and still appear indifferent to the outcome? Could have been a factor. I cannot say I know. What I'm saying is that any time such things are factors, they are likely to drop out of the frame altogether, and perhaps become invisible to journalists themselves. They won't mention them, instead shifting their explanations to things that make better sense or have "instant" validity, like Keller with the McCain & lobbyists story: "We published it when it was ready." The onlookers groan, the journalists dig in, the conspiracy theorists run wild, and after a while "war" seems like a good option. OT: Penn resigns I thought this was relevant to this discussion. The story discussed at the USC Online Journalism Review is an arts article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, not political in the least: As of when I wrote this piece, the Pine article had elicited more than 160 comments from readers. Some of the comments ripped into Pine and the article, often based on widespread misinformation about Pine that Reich refuted in the piece. (Initial reports said that Pine was run over by a commuter train when she refused to let go of the strap to her multi-million-dollar violin, which was trapped in the train's door. Reich reported that the strap had wound around Pine's arm, making it impossible for her to free herself.) Other readers tried to correct them, and flame wars broke out all over the section, as the comments drifted from diatribes on the treatment of Iraq War veterans to arguments about jury verdicts. (Pine won a multi-million dollar judgment against the train agency.) |
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