Media Matters: Even while carrying McCain's water, media worry they aren't doing enough for him

[DeepModem Mom]

Media Matters for America: Even while carrying McCain's water, media worry they aren't doing enough for him

John McCain complaining about media coverage is a little like an oil company complaining about profit margins: hard to believe, and even harder to feel much sympathy. This is, after all, a politician who has referred to the press as his "base," and a politician about whom MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has said "every last one of them (reporters) would move to Massachusetts and marry John McCain if they could." As Eric Alterman and George Zornick recently explained in The Nation, "no candidate since John F. Kennedy, and perhaps none since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has enjoyed such cozy relations with the press."

But the coziness of that relationship has become increasingly one-sided in recent months, as McCain and his campaign lash out at the media, who then redouble their efforts to please the Arizona senator.

In early May, McCain senior adviser Mark Salter released a memo accusing the media of "forming a protective barrier around (Obama), declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race," adding: Senator Obama has good reason to think this plan will succeed, as serious journalists have written of the need for 'de-tox' to cure 'swooning' over Senator Obama, and others have admitted to losing their objectivity while with him on the campaign trail. Later that month, McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt claimed MSNBC is "a partisan advocacy organization that exists for the purpose of attacking John McCain." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz dutifully typed up Schmidt's charge without offering a contrary point of view. Nor did Kurtz note that McCain is subject of regular and effusive praise from MSNBC employees such as Chris Matthews, who has a habit of saying that McCain "deserves" to be president and says he "loves" McCain.

This week, the McCain campaign against the media went into overdrive. First, McCain allies began complaining that Obama's trip abroad was garnering a great deal of media attention. Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, for example, said: "The question really needs to be posed: Is this type of coverage fair? ... This is nothing but a political stunt." McCain spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker complained that "it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip." Today, the Republican National Committee sniffed about Obama's "overwhelming advantage in attention paid by the media."...And, as they often do when Republicans complain about the media, the media paid close attention. The Associated Press ran an article headlined, "Is media playing fair in campaign coverage?" The article was built around Republican complaints and contained not a word of criticism that the media has been excessively kind to McCain rather than Obama. The New York Times reported that coverage of Obama's trip abroad "feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates."...

***

All throughout the spring, as the media were obsessively focusing on every controversy, real or imagined, involving Obama or Clinton while giving McCain a pass, journalists kept promising that they'd scrutinize McCain just as soon as the Democratic primaries were over. Insisting that they couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time, reporters argued that the free ride McCain was getting was simply a result of the media's inability to cover both the Democratic candidates and John McCain. But they'd get around to the Republican nominee eventually....Well, they still aren't scrutinizing John McCain. And now, perversely, that lack of scrutiny is in effect being used to argue that the media are treating McCain poorly by not paying more attention to him....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200807250013?f=h_latest

[creeksneakers2]

1. Great article

There's a big hoax about who is benefiting from media bias.

[Cha]

2. Thank mediamatters...they know what's goin' on with the press

and mccain. They are NOT treating the candidates equally as per orders from corporatewhoreheadquarters.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

3. First the McCain campaign dares and taunts Obama to go abroad

And now they call it a stunt. McCain wants more media attention but gets visibly upset with reporters when they focus on his gaffes and inconsistencies that are in evidence every time he appears in public. It's really comical. I hope the Democratic National Convention hires a McCain impersonator to do a comedy routine when they meet.

[Faygo Kid]

4. Excellent. The McCain intimidation has got to stop, and the media has to grow some new ones.

[Uncle Joe]

5. I'm looking forward to the News Hour with Jim Lehrer this Friday, maybe then they will find time

to have Mark Shields address David Brooks B.S. charge about the "liberal media" myth being a fact.

How about this for a fact six corporations own 90+% of everything the American People see on television, hear on the radio or read in print.

Brooks said 90+% of journalists vote Democratic and therefore are liberal, well you damn sure can't tell it by their reporting! I don't believe they're liberal, actually I don't even believe they're conservative, they're corporate and they tow the corporate line. It just so happens the Republican Party is corporate, first, last and in the middle and this accounts to most favorible overall corporate media treatment of Republican candidates, whether they're qualified or not.

Thanks for the thread, DeepModem Mom.

[young_at_heart]

6. CBS certainly prefers him

Just ask Katie Couric.