The Secret Weapon
Apr 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm by Susie
From Jim VandeHei, John F. Harris in the Politico (via Lambert). Like Lambert, I’m a little astounded that they’re raising these relevant issues (go read the whole thing):
If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient and uncertain.
The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.
(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)
(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama’s speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he’s on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)
All this is hardly the end of the world. Clinton is not behind principally because of media bias; Obama is not ahead principally because of media favoritism. McCain won the GOP nomination mainly through good luck and the infirmities of his opposition. But the fact that lots of reporters personally like the guy — and a few seem to have an open crush — did not hurt.
But the protectiveness toward Obama revealed in the embarrassing rush of many journalists to his side this week does touch on at least four deeper trends in the news business.
1. The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards — favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority — were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer’s real feelings.
But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational — and more candid — language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press’s Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: “The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents’ record and continued to show why he’s the most malleable — and least credible — major presidential candidate.”
This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama.
But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational. … And it’s that theme that’s brought crowds in the door and to their feet.”
It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism.
Wherever the line, it is clear that the profession collectively has stepped over it — based as much on what it hasn’t covered as what it has.
Susie: Personally I am of the belief that people see press coverage through their own filter and are thus pre-inclined to read their own narrative into it. So what. I’ll drop that and accept your argument 100%: the press loves them some Obama and wouldn’t give Clinton credit if she cured cancer while flying her self-made rocket to the moon. How does that jibe with your routine argument regarding “electability”?
If you, the hard-nosed realist who cares more about electability than anything else, can’t see how your unfair press argument leads to the obvious conclusion that Obama is the more electable, than I am surprised. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in predictions of electability in general – I think both Clinton and Obama bring some strengths and some weaknesses to the table. But if you’re going to elevate the electability argument to the top, how do reconcile it with a concurrent belief Clinton is incapable of getting good coverage whilst Obama could club seal pups on the White House lawn and get away with it.
I know the obvious answer: the press loves Obama now but will turn on him with ferocity once he gets the nomination. The problem with that argument is as soon as you look at the term “the press” this notion of herd behavior falls apart, In 2008, when study after study shows more people getting their news from blogs, cable, radio and other non-traditional media outlets this notion that NBC and the NY Times control the debate are patently false. In this fractured a media market any argument about “the press” marching in lockstep is really hard to buy into. But if you accept it and if you want to push the electability argument it’s awfully hard to see how that leads to Clinton being the stronger candidate in the general election.
so, we cannot use right wing talking points but it is okay to say that hillary is only losing due to media bias.
got it.
but of course, somehow you see through this media bias, unlike the rest of the rubes huh?
but again, we cannot be elitist and think we are smarter than the rocky-loving bowling class…
how do you square these two contrary implications?
Do you guys monitor your RSS feeds for new posts here or something?
zuzu…they’re the 1-2 punch, like stink is to shit
steveeboy…you haven’t gotten beyond a talking point yet.
Bob…if it’s the electability argument that you seek, you can find your answers here…at Survey USA where Obama is losing in typical battle ground states and even strugging in traditionally blue states like MA. I quite believe that you would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary and accept and admire (to a point) that conviction.
But rather than discuss the posting on it’s merits, you decided to go off half cocked on the electability issue. If you want to show Susie the courtesy of discussing the merits of what Harris and Vandehei (or even Lambert) are saying…why don’t you start doing that instead?
SO, white_n_az, I realize you think you have some water-tight arguments against Obama. Would you still vote for him, if he should become the Dem nominee? Or would you let McCain win?
Because as a mild (not rabid) Obama supporter, I’d support Hillary anyday, anyway, over McCain. She’d do right by us on the Supreme Court. And while I hesitate, based on her slavish support of the most Likud elements in Israel and Neoconservativism, she would not be for Iraq 4 Evah — at least 100 years — quite unlike McCain.
white_n_az, what do you say?
G Newman @ 5
Of course…I could never vote for McCain. Not that my vote will actually matter because I live in AZ but I still have to live with myself and as a Democrat, I have to vote for the Democratic candidate, holding my nose as it were, it I have to.
Recognize though that this has nothing to do with Susie’s posting or nothing to do with the electability argument as diverted by Bob.
white_n_az: If the media carries weight and if the media greatly prefers Obama to Clinton then the electability argument now has one check mark in Obama’s column. That’s all I’m arguing. If you are going to argue electability and media bias it’s awfully hard to put the two together and come up with “the media hates Clinton and loves Obama therefore Clinton is the more electable”.
What I was pointing out was the incompatibility of the two arguments – neither of which are arguments I personally accept. I actually went to rather great lengths to point out that A. I don’t believe such a thing as the “media” exists anymore - media is too disbursed today so all this talk of the “media” being anti-Clinton and pro-Obama is shaky at best and B. electability arguments are more often wrong than right. The Democratic Party and most liberals were praying for George W. Bush to beat John McCain in 2000 – no way we could loose to that guy. John Kerry was the “electable” choice in 2004, rather than that screaming maniac Howard Dean. Hell, I remember the glee on the left that greeted the nomination of Ronald Reagan. All those beliefs were backed by polls “proving” the electability arguments were sound.
Maybe, just maybe, the time has come to stop trying to predict the future and go with the candidate you think is the best.