If he's a journalist, he must be in the tank for Obama
| The other day I was doing the reporting for an editorial* on John McCain's and Barack Obama's economic policies, part of a series we're doing called "Position papers for the Next President." I haven't been covering the campaign, so I didn't have phone numbers for McCain's or Obama's media people. I found a number for McCain's headquarters on his website (By the way, what happened to the chipper welcome-screen video from Sarah Palin? That space has nothing but McCain biographies now!), but Obama's offered only a form for reporters to fill out to solicit answers. So I submitted the form. McCain's people set me up fairly quickly with a policy person, but I didn't hear back from Obama's campaign (I eventually tracked down a press aide in California, but he didn't connect me with anyone on Obama's policy team, either). The next evening I received an e-mail from the Obama campaign (Download you own copy!) welcoming me to the fold. Evidently, by indicating that I was a member of the media, I identified myself to the campaign as a supporter. Makes sense, non? Media=liberal=ready to go to work for Barack! Keep reading to see the opening sentences from the e-mail: |
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Dear Jon,
Thanks for joining this movement. It will take all of us working together to bring change to this country, and we wanted to make sure you know about all the opportunities to get involved in your community and online.
Check out the resources below -- learn how you can connect with fellow supporters, organize in your neighborhood, build our national grassroots organization, and stay informed with the very latest campaign news.
It's so nice to be wanted, and yet I kinda feel like I'm being taken for granted.... Anyway, my colleagues and I on the board remain officially neutral, at least until we endorse McCain, Obama or someone else this weekend.
* Yes, editorial writers actually do reporting, but we don't necessarily use the information to shape our opinions. In fact, we try to make up our minds first because it makes the whole process go faster.
Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Jon,
You're right that the ACORN controversy was tangential to my original point. I should have used ellipses to remove that reference from the Glenn Reynolds quote. Since I didn't though, and it has entered our discussion, I might as well use it as a concrete example of my argument:
1. Setting aside all of the controversies in which ACORN has been involved over the years, the simple fact that a presidential candidate's political career has been so closely intertwined with this organization should have prompted journalists to scrutinize it. It seems ludicrous to me that the press would deem a presidential candidate's political alliances to be unworthy of scrutiny. The press is even vetting Joe The Plumber's background for crying out loud. Given that this organization has been dogged by a long history of controversy even before this election season the refusal of the press to investigate it is even more indefensable.
2. Due the the work of conservative writers like Stanley Kurtz it has become clear that ACORN was involved in the sub-prime mortgage crisis story as well. This seems to me to be a second, independent, reason why the Los Angeles Times should have devoted some coverage to ACORN. The Times found McCain's "six degrees of separation" links to the sub-prime crisis by way of Rick Davis' former lobbying firm to be worthy of coverage. Why not ACORN?
3. Unbelievably, even after this organization, which received over $800,000 from a presidential candidate for GOTV projects (a payment the campaign attempted to hide), and which has received lots of taxpayer funding, was found to have engaged in massive, widespread, illegal voter registration fraud the Los Angeles Times still has not deemed it worthy of anything more than a couple perfunctory wire-service blurbs buried in the back pages. I realize that the media is justifying their lack of coverage by pointing out that voter registration fraud is not the same thing as voter fraud, but it is a legitimate issue in itself when it is linked to a presidential candidate, and it is significant in that fraud this massive tends to undermine public confidence in the electoral process. As you suspected, though, even this weak-tea justification for the lack of coverage is crumbling now.
Frankly, ACORN was not even one of the issues I was thinking about when I wrote my original comment above. It just happens to be the closest tool at hand, so to speak, for making my point here. I do not share your confidence that the media's cheerleading for Obama cannot be sustained. I have been absolutely stunned by the way the Times has managed to create the "nasty Republicans" issue out of nothing more than a few isolated hecklers at rallies, media stereotypes of Republicans as haters and unreconstructed racists, and whole cloth. I presume we are in for many more stories like this for the next four to eight years.
Posted by: Aldo | October 17, 2008 at 04:46 PM
Hey, Aldo. Totally understood. ACORN poses huge policy problems that Dems don't seem to recognizes, to wit, the holes in the registration and voting process that make it too easy to commit vote fraud. But there's a difference between registration hijinx and casting illegal ballots, and Repubs haven't acknowledged that, either. You'll no doubt provide me links to the contrary, but I just haven't seen credible evidence of large-scale illegal voting, as opposed to throwing a bunch of lousy registrations at undermanned state registrars.
But that's not your main point, and I'm not trying to quibble with you. I'm obviously a journalism homer -- it's what I do, and I believe in it because I've seen it up close for close to three decades, not despite that insider POV. What happens again and again is that the gloves always come off. Fairly or not, every public official gets ripped a new one. Sometimes it's because of diligent reporting; often it's because of the "gotcha" mentality of the ultra-competitive press corps. That adversary approach has only been heightened by the arrival of blogs, both independent and partisan ones, doing their own hunt for errors, scandals and controversy.
Think of it this way. No one has ever won a Pulitzer for writing about what a good job someone's doing in office. If you think the press has given Obama a pass, such coverage simply cannot be sustained in this environment. The search for fault is relentless.
Posted by: Jon Healey | October 17, 2008 at 12:47 PM
Jon,
I have always found you personally to be thoughtful and fair, but the partisan bias in the media in general and the Los Angeles Times specifically is a genuine concern.
"The Blogfather" Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wrote on October 14th:
It appears that we may be entering an era in which the Democratic party will control both the executive and legislative branches of government while the left in general dominates academia, the public schools (for which Bill Ayers is writing curriculum), entertainment media and cultural institutions. If the Fourth Estate cannot write about Democrats and the left critically our democracy will be poorly served.
Posted by: Aldo | October 17, 2008 at 08:18 AM