Tag: Politics

Putting presumption in context

The Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly weighs in with a well-timed piece on the Republican meme that Barack Obama is too “presumptuous” to be president — and on the media’s willingness to play along.

It appears that all of this is being brought to a head right now. At the moment, it’s looking like this year’s version of Al Gore’s lies that weren’t, or of John Kerry’s flip-flopping and failure to respond adequately to the Swift Boat attacks.

You can talk about the liberal media all you want, and there’s no doubt that most mainstream journalists are liberals. But there’s also no doubt that there’s a tendency among nominally liberal journalists, especially opinion-mongers, to make their bones by mocking liberal politicians.

Exhibit A is Dana Milbank’s piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post, which begins, “Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.” That might have been the moment when this particular line of attack finally jumped the shark. Or perhaps not.

Adam rushes in where others have feared to tread, writing that criticism of Obama as being narcissistic and presumptuous is, among other things, “a crafty way of playing the race card — of essentially calling Obama an uppity black man without actually using those words.” Exactly. Show me someone who’s won a major-party presidential nomination and I’ll show you someone who’s presumptuous. But some of Obama’s detractors sound like they’re ready to walk right up to the brink of suggesting that, well, he just doesn’t know his place.

(Disclosures: Adam’s a friend, he cites Media Nation and we talked through some of this while he was doing his reporting.)

Obama’s not perfect. As is the case with many ambitious people (like, for instance, John McCain), he has an unattractive tendency to use people and move on. His longstanding association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright remains troubling, and you can be sure we’ll be hearing more about it.

But by hitting him with the Republican Party’s sneering talking points, the media are not just doing the opposition’s dirty work. They’re flirting with something quite a bit uglier as well.

Photo (cc) by Jack Thielepape and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

As always, the first casualty

In my latest for the Guardian, I consider the plight of Zoriah Miller, a freelance photographer who’s been banned from covering U.S. Marines in Iraq because his images are too graphic. And I argue that the Bush administration’s ongoing censorship of the war’s photographic record is giving John McCain an unfair advantage.

A closer look at Obama and the media

No doubt you’ve noticed that the media are giving Barack Obama far more coverage than John McCain. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe last week ate up 51 percent of all campaign coverage. The PEJ adds:

The trip also helped Obama, for the seventh consecutive week, dominate John McCain in the contest for media exposure. The Democrat was a significant or dominant factor in 81% of the campaign stories studied compared with 53% for McCain. Interestingly, even with all the attention to Obama’s trip, those numbers dovetail closely with the weekly coverage averages since the general election campaign began in June. In that period, Obama has factored in 79% of the coverage with McCain at 52%.

(PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel discusses the findings on this week’s “On the Media.”)

It’s no wonder that the McCain campaign has taken to making videos that mock the media’s supposed love of Obama.

But hold on. More coverage doesn’t necessarily translate into favorable coverage. As it turns out, a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), at George Mason University, shows that coverage of both Obama and McCain has been more negative than positive — but that Obama has clearly gotten the worst of it. (“Media Bash Barack — Not a Typo” is the headline of the center’s press release, reproduced in full below.)

The study’s findings, reported by James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times, show that of 249 campaign stories airing on the three network nightly newscasts and the first half-hour of Fox News’ “Special Report with Brit Hume,” Obama’s coverage has been 72 percent negative and 28 percent positive, whereas McCain’s has been 57 percent negative and 43 percent positive.

The Fox effect does not appear to be too pronounced, as the study finds that “Special Report” was only slightly more negative to both candidates than the three broadcast networks.

How can this be? Well, think about the tone of the coverage in recent weeks. Obama has regularly been criticized for “presumptiveness” and “arrogance” because he has acted as though he might actually be elected president this November.

And think about how many times Obama has been asked if he was wrong about the surge in Iraq. In fact, it appears that he was wrong — but not nearly as wrong as McCain was about the war, which has now resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Americans and nearly 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Yet it is rare when McCain is grilled about the single most important issue of the campaign.

All this is having an effect. According to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, McCain now leads Obama among likely voters by a margin of 49 percent to 45 percent, a swing of nine points over the past month.

McCain is not Hillary Clinton, who, along with her husband, have been despised by the media for years. Rather, McCain has been a media favorite for the past decade-plus. Remember, he once half-jokingly referred to the press as his “base.”

The CMPA study is not yet on the organization’s Web site. Here is the full text of its press release:

MEDIA BASH BARACK (NOT A TYPO)
Study Finds Obama Faring Worse On TV News Than McCain

Barack Obama is getting more negative coverage than John McCain on TV network evening news shows, reversing Obama’s lead in good press during the primaries, according to a new study by Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). The study also finds that a majority of both candidates’ coverage is unfavorable for the first time this year. According to CMPA President Dr. S. Robert Lichter, “Obama replaced McCain as the media’s favorite candidate after New Hampshire. But now the networks are voting no on both candidates.”

These results are from the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) 2008 Election News Watch Project. They are based on a scientific content analysis of 249 election news stories (7 hours 38 minutes of airtime) that aired on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Fox Special Report (first half hour) from June 8, 2008 to July 21, 2008. Previously we analyzed 2144 stories (43 hrs 30 min airtime) during the primary campaign from December 16, 2007 through June 7, 2008. We report on all on-air evaluations of the candidates by sources and reporters, after excluding comments by the campaigns about each other.

MAJOR FINDINGS:

Since the primaries ended, on-air evaluations of Barack Obama have been 72% negative (vs. 28% positive). That’s worse than John McCain’s coverage, which has been 57% negative (vs. 43% positive) during the same time period.

This is a major turnaround since McCain and Obama emerged as front-runners in the early primaries. From the New Hampshire primary on January 8 until Hillary Clinton dropped out on June 7, Obama’s coverage was 62% positive (v. 38% negative) on the broadcast networks; by contrast, McCain’s coverage during this period was only 34% positive (v. 66% negative).

Obama ran even farther behind McCain on Fox News Channel’s Special Report with 79% negative comments (v. 21% positive), compared to 61% negative comments (v. 39% positive) for McCain since June 8. During the primaries Obama had a slight lead in good press on Fox, with 52% favorable comments (v. 48 % unfavorable), compared to 48% favorable (v. 52% unfavorable) for McCain.

Obama’s bad press has come at a time when he was much more visible than McCain. Since June 8, he has been the subject of 120 stories on the three network evening news shows, 50% more than John McCain’s 80 stories.

Examples of Obama’s evaluations:

Positive: “Obama came to Baghdad and he brought his star power with him … hundreds of U.S. troops and State Department personnel mobbed Obama at the embassy here.” — Terry Moran, ABC

Negative: “You raised a lot of eyebrows on this trip saying, even knowing what you know now, you still would not have supported the surge. People may be scratching their heads and saying, ‘why’?” — Katie Couric, CBS

Negative: “Far more Americans say John McCain would be a good commander in chief than Obama.” — Jake Tapper, ABC

CMPA has monitored every presidential election since 1988 using the same methodology, in which trained coders tally all mentions of candidates and issues and all evaluations of candidates. For previous CMPA findings on the 2008 elections: http://cmpa.com/Studies/Election08/election08.htm

How stupid can the Times get?*

Very. Walter Brooks explains. And the New York Times, in what may have been a misguided attempt to give Barack Obama some cover, has managed to turn his innocent wave to the Berlin crowd into a Nazi salute. Good grief.

*Correction: I take it back. The front of the Boston Globe shows Obama waving with his right hand, but the “Angola” sign is still backwards. Clearly it was just turned around. How stupid can I get?

The Globe takes the GOP’s bait

The Boston Globe takes dictation from the Republican National Committee today, turning an innocuous remark by a Barack Obama adviser into evidence that Obama is so arrogant he’s already acting like he’s president.

I’ll work backwards. In a brief item, the Globe’s Foon Rhee notes that the RNC was gleefully passing around a story from the Politico yesterday in which an Obama adviser described the candidate’s speech in Berlin, scheduled for Thursday, as the sort that a president might deliver. Here’s Rhee:

… Republicans are highlighting any perceived hint of Obama arrogance. The Republican National Committee yesterday sent out a report by the Politico website about an exchange between reporters and an Obama adviser about Obama’s speech tomorrow in Berlin that is expected to draw thousands.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” the adviser said. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter replied, according to Politico.

That’s how the item ends. But it looked fishy to me, and I was right. Next stop: the RNC’s Web site, which highlights the exchange under its “Audacity Watch,” an ongoing feature dedicated to the proposition that Obama is so insufferably arrogant that he believes he might actually be elected president this November.

Finally, going back to the source, here is the Politico story that got the Republicans all excited. You will not be surprised to learn that their faux outrage is derived entirely from a crucial omission. Here’s what the Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown actually wrote:

At a morning background briefing, reporters parried with senior advisers on the characterization of Obama’s speech Thursday in Berlin as a campaign rally. The outdoor speech at the Victory Column could draw thousands of people, similar to the size of Obama events in the United States.

“It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.”

“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.

“He is going to talk about the issues as an individual … not as a candidate, but as an individual, as a senator,” the adviser added….

After the briefing, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki offered a statement from [Obama campaign head David] Axelrod to reporters: “The answer is that, of course, any event outside of a [congressional delegation trip] is a campaign event. But it is not a political rally. He will not engage his American political opponents. It is a speech to our allies and the people of Europe and the world. And as such, we wanted it to be open to the public and not just invited guests.”

In other words, the Obama campaign, far from claiming presidential prerogatives, was trying to answer criticism that Obama’s Berlin speech will be a campaign rally held on foreign soil. The anonymous adviser tried to draw an analogy to a presidential speech, got cut down and quickly corrected himself. Axelrod then clarified.

If you want to criticize Obama for holding a campaign rally in Berlin, well, be my guest. But the Republicans are dead wrong to label this affair as evidence of Obama’s arrogance, and they made their case through dishonestly selective quoting. The Globe should have taken five more minutes to determine whether the attack was fair or not.

McCain’s factually inaccurate op-ed

The John McCain op-ed piece that was rejected by the New York Times contains at least one bit of factually inaccurate information about Barack Obama. That alone is sufficient reason to send it back for a rewrite. Instead, McCain has chosen to go public and claim that the Times refused to publish what he had written despite having run a commentary by Obama last week.

Here is the inaccuracy:

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

The truth, of course, is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has indeed endorsed Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal. Republicans are now spinning like mad to make it appear that Maliki’s remarks had not been properly translated. But this Josh Marshall post makes it clear that Maliki said what he meant and meant what he said.

In fairness, it should be noted, as Time’s Joe Klein does, that McCain’s piece was rejected last Friday, and Maliki’s remarks were not reported until the next day. But Klein goes on to observe that the McCain campaign still refuses to acknowledge that Maliki said what he said. In any case, there’s no doubt McCain’s op-ed would need to be revised in order to avoid making a false statement about Obama (and Maliki).

According to the Times, the newspaper has published at least seven op-eds by McCain since 1996. I can’t imagine that it won’t be publishing another one or two before this campaign is over.

But if McCain wants his words published without any editing or vetting whatsoever, then he ought to buy an ad.

What liberal media?*

Check out the nominally liberal Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, who absolutely unloaded on Barack Obama in Sunday’s paper in a piece headlined “The Audacity of Ego.” Ouch.

No doubt Obama is possessed of a healthy self-regard and then some. But isn’t it pretty typical for a presidential candidate — especially one who’s new to the national political scene — to undertake a foreign trip?

*Eric Alterman wrote the book.

Changing your mind is … unpatriotic?

You’re going to see a lot of this, unfortunately. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers couldn’t manage a comment on Obama’s shift on Iraq without attacking his patriotism. Here is Rogers in the New York Times:

There is nothing wrong with changing your mind when the facts on the ground dictate it. Indeed, the facts have changed because of the success of the surge that John McCain advocated for years and Barack Obama opposed in a position that put politics ahead of country.

That last bit is so awkwardly grafted on that it’s obviously deliberate. And it’s going to happen a lot. Here we begin to see the real harm in Wesley Clark’s true but impolitic remarks about McCain’s getting shot down not being a qualification for president: they are so easily mischaracterized as an attack on McCain’s military service that they can be seen as justifying questions about Obama’s patriotism.

I recommend this David Greenberg essay in Slate on how patriotism has played out in presidential politics.