Wide Open Thread + Greenwald on the Media
By SusanUnPC on January 7, 2008 at 3:47 PM in Media, Presidential Candidates
[UPDATE! Bill Kristol has lost his virginity!]
Post whatever! In the administrative No Quarter pages, I can see that we’re getting lots of activity from Larry’s post about Sibel Edmonds. Good! Next: Glenn Greenwald, as usual, writes a must-read for Salon today, “The role of political reporters“:
At The New Republic‘s blog, Jason Zengerle confesses what is and has long been too obvious to require much proof — the media is uncontrollably in love with John McCain. And Zengerle’s reason why this is so is equally unsurprising: McCain gives them unfettered access, so they love him. Everything is about them, and whichever politician flatters and charms these adolescent, coddled narcissists is the recipient of their uncritical love (that explains much, though not all, of their profound failure in covering the Bush campaigns and administration). …
Greenwald then quotes Zengerle:
Speaking of McCain and the media, I was at a dinner tonight with various political reporters who are up here to cover the happenings, and it was pretty funny how giddy/relieved they were at the prospect of a McCain-Obama general election campaign, as opposed to, say, a Romney-Clinton one. Suddenly, the next 11 months of their lives look a whole lot more enjoyable.
Then Greenwald hits it out of the park:
Those preferences — all based in their own petty personal desires — couldn’t be more obvious in the media narrative spewing forth. Dancing around like munchkins in Oz, they proclaim that the wicked Clinton witch is dead and McCain is surging with a miraculous, glorious comeback.
Leave aside whether any of that is true. Why are predictions and speculation even part of the job of a political reporter at all? One can see why opinionists and pundits might dabble in that sort of predictive analysis, but why do “reporters” covering these campaigns consider it their province to guess about which candidates are going to win and lose, as opposed to, say, reporting on what they argue, what their claims are, the truth of their positions, etc. etc.?
Aside from the fact that these endless prediction games completely overwhelm any substantive discussions, their guesses — which are really wishes — are almost always dreadfully wrong and plainly designed to advance their concealed agenda for which candidates they like and dislike. Why is any of that something that reporters ought to be doing at all? Is there any distinction between what a “reporter” does and what a “pundit” does covering this campaign? There doesn’t seem to be any.
Greenwald is pissed that the media aren’t covering Edwards:
[T]here has been one candidate who has been genuinely surging in the last week or two among Democratic voters nationally — John Edwards: …
Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn’t even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead — after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.
Greenwald isn’t done. He even gives a nod to Fred Thompson’s frustrations, and to those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
Go read Time or The New Republic or The Politico or The Washington Post and see if you can find any examples of straight factual reporting about the remaining candidates, their positions, anything substantive — rather than endless, group-think gossip about tactics and winning/losing predictions. It basically doesn’t exist (here’s an interview Ana Marie Cox conducted with John McCain yesterday where she tried to press him on his comment that we should remain in Iraq for 100 years — notable because it’s so rare to find any questions of this type).
I realize none of this is a revelation. But it’s still astonishing how extreme it is. The point isn’t just that this empty chatter squeezes out anything more meaningful — it does — but that it completely drives voter perceptions and controls the ability of candidates to be heard.
Here is an interview with Fred Thompson on the Today Show where he makes this point quite well, chiding the interviewer for asking him about nothing other than the sorts of speculative, irrelevant predictive matters that dominate press coverage, to the complete exclusion of anything he is trying to argue as part of his campaign. Inventing exciting dramatic narratives and predicting outcomes just isn’t the role of a political reporter, even thought it’s what most of them to do to the exclusion of all else.
UPDATE: Speaking of petty, vacuous journalists acting like giddy munchkins, here’s Mickey Kaus (emphasis in original) … “Monday’s Must-See Event–The Train Wreck Tour: The reporters I talk to are looking forward to the final pre-election joint Bill and Hillary Clinton rally Monday evening with the same lascivious delight you might encounter before a Britney Spears/Amy Winehouse double bill. Everyone expects it to be a gruesome night for the Clintons; their aides have been lashing out at the press uncharmingly. Anything could happen! …”
As Kevin Drum says, there are all kinds of reasons why a rational person might consider the defeat of Hillary Clinton to be a good thing. The fact that it’s being caused, in part, by snide, catty sniping over petty matters from reporters who hate the Clintons isn’t one of them. Just compare the anti-Clinton media histrionics over the fact that she “raised her voice” (very mildly) during the debate with their endless love for McCain, one of the most tempermental and uncontrollably angry political figures in the country. …
Read it all. And, per usual, Glenn keeps adding updates all day.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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