Press Strangely Non-Whiny about Obama's Private Meetings
September 23, 2008
Press Strangely Non-Whiny about Obama's Private Meetings
From Ace of Spades
http://ace.mu.nu/
When Barack Obama had his magical mystery tour of Europe, he met with foreign leaders. Here's an interesting nugget about those meetings from the NYTimes:
On his second visit to Israel, he sought to reassure voters of his capacity to serve on the international stage. The audience for the trip, despite a private series of dawn-to-dusk meetings, clearly was the American electorate as much as the foreign leaders.
Interesting contrast. They simply reported the meetings were private. No demand for access, no snarky blog posts about how long they were allowed into the meeting. No votes to ban coverage. When Obama met with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the meeting was private as well. The British press even wrote a story about how the privacy of the meeting with Gordon Brown.
I must have missed the part where the media pouted and stamped their feet about being cut out of that meeting.
And he's the presidential candidate for the Democrats, so his meetings should be considered even more newsworthy to the press, right?
Newsbusters noticed the same trend.
Funny how their outrage seems to be so darned selective, isn't it?
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Here is what the media should do?
Start being fair and balanced then I think the McCain campaign will open up more to media access. Why give them access when they are in the tank for Obama. Look what happen last month. A reporter asked McCain about his houses, McCain said he will get back with them. Reporters took this as a story and ran with it fueling the so-called gaffe by McCain. They are getting what they deserve. The American people will vet Gov. Palin.
The McCain camp is following
The McCain camp is following an excellent strategy, IMHO. Notice the AP never mentioned the size of the crowd at The Villages for the Palin rally. It took local reporters doing work on the ground to cover that story. The AP is trying to cover national politics from the top down and they aren't doing their homework. By working with people on the ground -- local papers, local reporters -- we all get a better story.
Here's an excellent article from Politico.com:
McCain sends press to cabbage class
By MICHAEL CALDERONE | 9/23/08 1:15 PM EDT
John McCain has all but cut himself off from the national press corps, an increasingly frustrated contingent of political scribes rumbling through battleground states on the campaign's second-tier bus.
The 15-minute press conference John McCain is scheduled to hold at 4 p.m. this afternoon in Freeland, Mich., shouldn’t be big news.
It is though, because it’s the first the Republican candidate for president of the United States has held since August 13—when the Russian invasion of Georgia was front-page news and more than two weeks before Sarah Palin joined the ticket and attention turned to field-dressing moose and dolling up pit bulls.
In that stretch, John McCain has all but cut himself off from the national press corps, an increasingly frustrated contingent of political scribes rumbling through battleground states on the campaign's second-tier bus. Some reporters still get face time with the Arizona senator. The Washington Post may be shut out, but the Palm Beach Post rides up front. And if you're a reporter with the Concord Monitor or Allentown Morning Call, you have a better shot of asking McCain about the race than anyone who with a Washington, D.C. ZIP code.
Even The Associated Press, which is distributed to more than 1,500 newspapers nationwide, suffers from the McCain camp's national-local divide, with the wire's local reporters more likely to be offered a seat next to McCain than its national reporters.
On Monday, the McCain campaign slammed the New York Times as being pro-Obama, continuing the campaign's penchant, dating back to several convention speeches that did so, for blasting the mainstream media, At this point, it's been almost 11 weeks since the national press was invited to hitch a ride with McCain, with multiple reporters pinpointing July 9 as the last such day.
During that outing, Los Angeles Times reporter Maeve Reston asked McCain about a comment by adviser Carly Fiorina criticizing insurance companies for covering Viagra but not birth control. McCain said he didn't want to discuss it, and after eight seconds of uncomfortable silence-captured on video by another reporter on the bus and uploaded straight to YouTube-he told Reston he'd have to get back to her.
About two weeks later, Jeff Sadosky, the campaign's director of regional media, sent out a memo to reporters with the subject: "The 'Coverage Gap' Between National and Battleground Media."
Sadosky wrote that "the gap between what the national press corps is writing and focusing on and what actual voters in battleground states are reading is larger than usual."
The memo cited of a list of headlines from national and local stories proving, in the campaign's view, that the national press was solely focused on trivia, from gaffes to process-driven drama.
"The overwhelming majority of American voters, and target voters in target states, get their news not from The New York Times or The Washington Post, but from their local newspaper and their evening news," Sadosky told Politico by phone.
The campaign, he went on, would "cut through the filter of the Beltway press corps whenever possible." He declined to comment on future access for the traveling media.
National reporters vary in their levels of grief.
"Some have come to acceptance," said one, while others continue "trying to figure out how to gain some access."
In recent days, reporters on the bus have complained more openly to McCain staffers. And in their stories - and especially in their blog posts - reporters increasingly complain about their lack of access to the candidate.
But since limiting press availability, McCain has climbed higher in the polls and now stays on message more effectively, leading to an “if-it-ain't-broke” mindset among his advisers.
excerpt see more at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13786.html