Confessions of Campaign Reporters: Tales of Heartbreak and Unrecquited Love

John McCain: Why don't you kids come over for dinner? Cindy and I will throw some steaks on the grill... Arizona style!
Reporters: We love youuuuuu John.
(Photo courtesy of USAToday.com, captions by Cindy Yeung)

With only a few days left on the trail, reporters have decided to spill their guts of their side of the story.

Michael Hastings, a Newsweek reporter, revealed an extensive reflection of his campaign coverage in a recent Men Style GQ ten page article, "Hack: Confessions of a Presidential Campaign Reporter." He depicts his sorry experience of being used and abused by campaign officials and candidates, which then led to his resignation during the primaries.

It was an abusive relationship between Hastings and candidates. From the love-hate for Rudy to his dreams of Huckabee to "learn [his name]...whom the candidate addresses on first-name basis," Hastings was so addicted and attached to their love and attention; he could only kiss ass and hope for the best:

The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You’re probably not going to get
much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of
information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and
nonthreatening, and over time you “build trust,” which everybody involved knows
is an illusion....For the top campaign officials and operatives, seduction and punishment of reporters is an art. Write this fluff piece now; we’ll give you something good later. No, don’t write it this way, write it that way. We’ll give you something good later.

Maeve Reston depicts similar symptoms of attachment with McCain in his LA Times article. From summer barbecues in McCain's Arizona cabin to talks of his honeymoons, Reston explains that McCain had "created a sense of intimacy with the reporters who traveled with him." Months later, the love was gone. McCain stopped answering his phone calls and threw away all those fond memories that they shared.

He would only be ignored by McCain: "The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door."

Reston seems almost heart-broken as he explains that McCain had a rare openness in the beginning of the trail but, "now, as the campaign plunges into its final days, that intimacy -- real or imagined -- is gone."

Clearly, these journalists have been stepping on a fine line on the rules of neutrality and professionalism in the ethics of journalism (see A2.24 - Keeping Our Detachment, Favoritism) by developing personal relationships and favoritism towards candidates. But are these measures necessary for an investigative reporter to dig deeper? Or have journalists simply forgotten their true objectives of ACTUAL reporting as they are cleverly seduced by candidates? A smack to the head for journalists everywhere who are reading these sorry accounts.

Full Disclosure: A Democractic Endorsement In Every Sense of the Word

Two weeks ago I wondered about presidential endorsements by a newspaper's editorial board and concluded that when a publication joins the civic discourse, the public should not fear, but welcome the opinionated interaction. But what happens when every individual contributor to a given publication wears her biases on a public sleeve?

Whereas some publications prefer a private editorial board vote before endorsing a presidential candidate, online mag Slate has -- for the third straight president race -- provided a list of both editors and contributors and their respective picks for president.

The result? All-around unsurprising:

Barack Obama: 55
John McCain: 1
Bob Barr: 1
Not McCain: 1
Noncitizen, can't vote: 4

But this alone does not necessarily make Slate a left-leaning publication. Editor David Plotz explains the curious, but voluntary practice here, stating:

I don't think a candidate's Slate victory reflects a bias that has corrupted the magazine during the campaign.

Former Slate editor Michael Kinsley does not deny that most journalists tend to vote Democratic, but stresses that an opinion is not a bias (!) and even points toward the practice of overcompensation in an attempt to check one's liberal tilt.

Though The Atlantic's Ross Douthat sees the Slate endorsement as undeniable proof of a left-leaning bias, his former colleague and current Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias was correct to suggest that we not assess the "subjective mental states of the staff," but the actual content when attempting to sniff out bias in a given publication.

Having three socialists doing page layout, two moderate conservative [sic] writing features on political relevant topics, and one moderately liberal film critic does not a left-of-center publication make ... [If] your publication contains some articles in which heterodox liberals challenge liberal conventional wisdom and other articles in which conservatives challenge liberal conventional wisdom, then your publication is mostly publishing conservative content.

And there you have it. As a journalist, you can not only vote for who you choose, but sing their praises from a mountain top, because it is only your work that deserves scrutiny.

In the tank: Blind Cheerleaders

It's probably best if we all just keep both feet planted firmly.

(Courtesy of Archives of Ontario)

This past week, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that since the party conventions, the media has "not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one." Such studies tend to beg the question, are they in the tank? But by extension, I am asking, what's it mean to be in the tank? Does it implicate the MSM as biased and blinded? And do we even care?

Juliet Lapidos of Slate provided "An unbiased etymology," in which she suggests the that the phrase stems from the 19th century term for swimming pools. "Americans called swimming pools 'tanks' and thus 'go into the tanks' was synonymous with 'to dive.'" This term carried itself into boxing, where William Safire believes "the metaphor evoked a picture of diving to the ring's canvas-covered floor--as if into a pool--to feign loss of consciousness." And thus, as implications of lost consciousness and rolling over abound--the extension to politics does not feel like a stretch.

Today, in the tank gives the impression of being "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled." Further implications entail being "self-interestedly involved; surreptitiously supportive" and times, "corruptly influenced." Bedazzling is something that should be left to magicians, and corruptly influenced bias is far from journalistic soundness.  

But when it comes to political coverage, it seems readers and journalists alike are quick to jump in the tank and the repercussions are large.  

Breaking down the P.E.J.'s report, the project's director Mark Jurkowitz says that "he simple message of our report is that: Winning begets winning coverage." As interest grows (as it does with each day closer to November 4), angles of coverage become contagious as they get dropped into the tank--er, echo chamber.

In the day of the Web and 24-hour news cycles, the amount of information available is immense. Punditry and reportage run the gauntlet of biases, and there is something out there for everyone. It seems, however, that rather than expanding minds, this information has been used to further dive into which ever tank you fall in. Callie Crossley, a media critic at WGBH Boston, suggests that " when people use the Web, as they've been using it in this election and it's been shown over and over, they tend to go to sites which reflect what they already believe."
Success seems to be begetting success, and when the media joins Obama in his tank, viewers and readers are quick to join. Conversely, some see McCain's denial of this as his downfall . But looking back at the original meaning of the term--taking a dive and going in the tank painted similar pictures of self-sabatoge as stock markets and boxers alike tank. This negative connotation, however, doesn't ring true as loudly as it used to, as it now lends itself to "working on someone's behalf." Perhaps, though, as we all follow suit, we should remain wary of in the tank's origins.  Otherwise, choosing sides may simply induce a case of the blind leading the blind.

Joe the Plumber gets his 15 minutes

Coverage on voting issues barely makes the cut with Joe the Plumber dominating the news
Courtesy of Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism

Wurzelbacher must be the most talked about plumber in the news. The media has descended on him with a fury of ‘investigative journalism’, checking everything from his tax records to his voting records. As it turns out he is not a licensed plumber and his first name is not really Joe.According to Jonah Goldberg of the New York Post, the news media has declared war on McCain's Everyman. Joe, he claims, is just being punished by the media for exhorting "revealing but embarrassing answers out of the media's preferred candidate". He represents individualism in opposition to Obama’s ‘collectivist’ policies to "spread the wealth around."
These media critics’ question seems to be: why is the media attacking Joe? The question should be why is the media even covering Joe so feverishly? Between October 13 and19 Joe the Plumber became the No. 3 campaign storyline of the week (filling 8% of the election news hole) according to the Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Joe is even being asked for his insights on Social Security and off-shore drilling, by Couric and Huckabee.
When it comes to election coverage, the media narrative is dotted with pseudo celebrities to create controversy - Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former radical William Ayers, and Alaska Trooper Mike Wooten, just to name a few. No doubt McCain shamelessly used Joe to symbolize the middle class man with the American dream. With the 25 mentions of his name in the presidential debate, some talk about Joe the Plumber was inevitable. But the media has catalyzed the process and catapulted him to his newfound Britney-Spears status. According to the celebrated plumber himself, he said he was surprised to hear his name so predominantly featured in the debate. "That bothered me. I wished that they had talked more about issues that are important to Americans." Well, I wish the media would talk more about issues that are important to Americans instead of creating and destroying 15-minute celebrities.

Bono: He isn't just the King of Ireland anymore...

(The vertically-challenged lead-singer of U2, Bono, will start contributing to the New York Times in 2009. Photo courtesy of The Guardian.)

The New York Times announced this week that it's hired a new columnist for its editorial section and his name may come as a surprise to many: Bono. That's right, the lead-singer of U2 will pen between 6 and 10 editorials for the paper in 2009...at no cost.

While there's no question he's a living legend in the music business, can he thrive as a columnist? Other famous musicians and celebs have contributed to the paper before and have proven their individual worth.

Take the drummer from Queen, Brian May, who blogged for the Times's science section, and just completed his PhD in astrophysics. Or look at Seinfeld creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David who scribed his usual neurosis-laden shtick for the paper and currently is writing for the Huffington Post, most recently about November 4th. Angelina Jolie has even written about the US's duty to stay in Iraq to help with reconstruction and humanitarian efforts for the Washington Post. Pretty heavy stuff.

The pieces they write are usually provocative, well-written and interesting. But do we want our celebrities mixing with politics, science and social issues in long-print form? Well, maybe not to deliver straight news, but why the heck not when it comes to them writing an editorial.

Times editorial page Editor Andrew Rosenthal, who hired Bono, notes that in fact, some of the country's most gifted and intelligent public servants aren't so gifted at giving their opinions. Take Condi Rice for example, who Rosenthal calls a "particularly bad op-ed writer." He also cited Tom Wolfe as a writer who can't control his word limit.

I don't think Bono will become the next Paul Krugman, the editorial writer for the Times, who was just awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. But celebrities can change the world for the better. So, let them talk and let them write.

I'll be waiting around for Bono to start penning his op-ed's, most likely about an important humanitarian cause, like AIDS in Africa or poverty around the globe. All I could hope for though, is that in the future, The Times will hire George Clooney so I can see Bill O'Reilly deliver a Talking Points Memo about how celebrity journalism is ruining the world.

Bold Predictions

"It’s over." That’s how New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow began his column on October 17th, two and a half weeks before Election Day. His column is titled "Nov. 5, 2008" (my birthday!) and predicts that Obama will crush McCain on Election Day. He even describes a scene of Obama waking up on Nov. 5th:

"President-elect Obama (yes, get used to it) could wake up that morning as one of the most powerful presidents in recent American history. Not only is his party likely to maintain control of both houses of the Congress, it could dramatically strengthen its hand."

Blow goes on to talk about the "probability" of Obama receiving a warm international welcome and "possibility" of Obama appointing several justices to the Supreme Court. Man, this guy must be feeling pretty good about his chances to shamelessly play Oracle in the pages of America’s newspaper of record.

Even David Brooks, a conservative columnist for The New York Times predicted that Obama would win by 9 percentage points in a Q&A with students of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Let’s be real. No reputable journalist would risk being wrong so publicly unless they felt good about their information. These predictions openly rely on recent polls and other studies that consistently predict Obama’s victory over McCain by more than a few percentage points. NPR’s final survey before Election Day showed Obama had a "commanding lead in battleground states and on all key elements of campaign."

First of all, it's unsettling that that journalists buy into the hype of these polls and use them as justification for their Delphic predications. This shows they're disregarding the king caveat: polls are a snap-shot in time based on a tiny sample and have a history of being incredibly wrong more than every once and a while.

But that's not the worst of it. Journalists seem to let polls affect the general tone of their coverage. In an interview with PBS’s Jim Lehrer, Associate Director of Project for Excellence in Journalism Mark Jurkowitz talked about a recent study that concluded, "if a candidate is perceived to be and is seen as doing well in polls, if the strategic dynamic of the campaign is favoring him, then he tends to get better coverage." Polls are pseudo-events, given legitimacy by the media's coverage of them, but not terribly legitimate in their own right. Such questionable numbers shouldn't hold that much sway on a journalist's work.

Regardless, journalists shouldn’t be in the business of crystal balls and soothsaying anyway. Ideally, journalists serve their readership and if in an election season the press’s job is to educate the electorate so they can cast an informed vote, predictions serve absolutely no purpose. There is no sense in journalists telling the public who will win, when the public is the one who will end up making that decision.

If the news media insists on discussing the polls, why not use the opportunity to educate their audience about how best to consume and understand polls?

Welcome to the Hypothetical Future

A thoroughly amusing and flashy take on the "Dewey defeats Truman" photo irresistibly taken from Steven Stark's Boston Phoenix article

Searching through this week’s Romanesko archives, I came across not one but three inventive articles which all take a considerable leap to focus on events that decidedly did not happen, or haven’t happened yet. On crosscut.com, a Seattle-based Northwest news site, self-professed Republican John Carlson spins a fairy tale where Palin is actually a Democrat, and as a result she receives glowing raves from the supposedly liberal media. His bias is devastatingly obvious, and as a result his mocking tone shows through and damages the effectiveness of his hypothetical, and by the time you reach the bottom of the page and he declares that he’s “long active in Republican politics,” it’s hardly a shocker. More interestingly, Steven Stark of the Boston Phoenix pens a piece about McCain’s shocking victory, published November 5th, 2008. Stark imagines that “the tsunami of youth support” for Obama never actually goes to the polls, but rather “the over-65 crowd who turned out as if the election were a five-o’clock dinner special.” Stark’s imagination runs wild, and he receives an angry comment from a poster known as theliberalcrab, who purports to have written a more interesting version of the November 5th story on his blog where Obama is the victor, and even revisits his own post to applaud his foresight (he modestly titles his post “Wow – Am I A Seer?”). My question is, is any of this relevant? Does anyone read this and find it moving or influential, or is it all just fluff? Sure, that’s a memorable and amusing graphic above, but does it have any effect on those reading these publications, or any others?