McCain’s Tiff With the Media Elite
July 22nd, 2008 | by Omnipotent Poobah |
John McCain can’t catch a break from the New York Times these days. The Times rejected his recent equal time op-ed piece in response to an Obama piece run last week. There’s nothing particular noteworthy about that, media outlets rejecting equal time requests are common now that the old mandatory equal time rules have gone by the wayside. Besides, you could hardly call the NYT editorial board hardcore McCainiacs. But the reason given for the rejection was a little different.
Amongst several other demands, the NYT said that Mr. McCainiac’s article,”would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory – with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”
What Does ‘Victory’ Mean Exactly
Obama’s article appeared to contain some of that information, but also seems short of that lofty goal. In fact, it’d be tough for any candidate to offer that much specificity on a very complex issue in a single op-ed article. Having said that, I’d sure like to see it – even in condensed form. We’re 7 years into this mess and nothing is any clearer than when we’d been there for 7 days. I’ve yet to hear the working definition of “victory” and no information about plans other than, “trust us, we know what we’re doing” – a hard position to argue when the administration continues to claim that any information will immediately allow the terrorists will “win”.
I can understand that newsprint isn’t cheap and that papers want their articles to be fresh and contain information people haven’t seen before. I can also see why they’d not like to have their prominent editorial page turned into a broadsheet campaign flyer. The Times says they often negotiate with op-ed contributors about what they will and won’t accept and they claim that’s the case here. On the other hand, campaigns understandably bristle at the restrictions and often use the opportunity to charge bias against a media outlet. It’s unclear if that’s the case here, although Team Walnuts hasn’t specifically charged that. The muck is further raked up when you look at the history between the two. The NYT endorsed McCain early on, but later was the first to break the story about McCain’s possibly overly close relationship with a female lobbyist. In other words, they have a love/hate thing goin’ on.
Now, both sides are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If the Times takes the position they have, the McCainiacs would have you believe they’re vicious, biased asshats who have it in for poor old John and the Obaminators would claim the Times was a bastion of fairness and toughness for demanding information that the entire population would probably like to see. Either way, things look bad for everybody.
Pootieheaded Embiciles
Me? I’m all about the free flow of ideas, although I accept that choosing op-ed pieces isn’t a fair process. Every editorial page has a position and that’s OK. In fact, the NYT probably is more supportive of Obama at this point, even if they’ve “officially” endorsed McCain in the past. I thought Obama’s piece was about as close as a paper can get to a balance between allowing the Big O to tout his ideas and preventing him from calling Bret Maverick a dangerous, pootieheaded, imbecile. That’s not the same as non-partisan, but it is what you can expect from candidates interested in advancing their ideas above all others.
If I were the NYT, I’d use the normal negotiations to squeeze as much new information as I could out of both candidates, but it would take a spectacularly uncooperative candidate to cause me to reject their article completely. It’s important for the process that everyone gets their say, even if I personally think it’s a Mr. McCain pie baked from fresh, fragrant road apples. I can’t say whether that’s happening here. I can completely believe that Mr. Cunt Trollope has it in him to be that uncooperative and I can also believe the NYT is bone-headed enough to make unreasonable demands. But either way, the McCainacs are far from being left stranded in the cold.
I they want to call Obama a Muslim terrorist, America hating, flag pin dissing traitor, I’m sure Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh would be delighted to air their point of view unedited and with plenty of supporting commentary.
Cross posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!
2 Responses to “McCain’s Tiff With the Media Elite”
By Craig R. Harmon on Jul 23, 2008 | Reply
I read about this. Obviously, neither the New York Times nor any other media outlet is under any obligation to run anything written by any candidate. On the other hand, any outlet that wishes to be considered a straight up news source rather than a biased, political hackery rag has to give some thought to the appearance of balance and fairness. In my opinion, that ship sailed for the Times a long time ago but that’s another question.
Here’s the thing. News sources are beginning to notice an imbalance by news sources in their coverage of the two campaigns. Newsweek has run more than twice as many covers featuring Obama than McCain over the last several years. News anchors are chasing Obama all around the world as he makes trips here, there and everywhere while McCain’s trips, not so much. Somewhere, sometime along the way, someone is going to count Obama stories and McCain stories, how many of each are favorable and how many are unfavorable to each candidate and my guess is that Obama will have gotten significantly more stories that are significantly more favorable than McCain will have gotten and the main-stream media will take another hit among those who expect impartiality and objectivity from their news sources. Then the msm will have to decide whether they will do something about it and stem the bleeding in their bottom lines from readers/viewers ignoring them in droves or not. Who knows.
For me, the bottom line is…so what? The New York Times rejected an op-ed written by McCain. That’s their right. Next issue.
By manapp99 on Jul 24, 2008 | Reply
The rejection of McCains op-ed is a gift to McCain. There is already a strong perception of media bias toward Obama and this just adds gas to the fire.
From Rasmussen:
“Monday, July 21, 2008
The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the New York Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.”