Media hostility toward anti-establishment candidates

[tomfodw]

Long but outstanding article by Glenn Greenwald, with serious implications for the Edwards campaign. Worth reading it all.



Media hostility toward anti-establishment candidates (www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/19/establishment_candidates/index.html)

Digby writes that the media is not merely obsessed with dreary "horse-race" coverage, but that their coverage even in that regard is profoundly flawed. In particular, she notes that two of the most significant "horse-race" political phenomena of the year -- the extraordinary fundraising by the Ron Paul campaign and the massive popularity of Mike Huckabee's candidacy among Republican voters -- are receiving scant attention, at least scant analytical attention, from our political press.

There is no question that the media has paid far less attention to Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee than the respective successes of their campaigns merit. To that list, though, I would add a third candidacy that has received far less media attention than it merits by all objective metrics (polls, stature and money): the John Edwards campaign. In 2004, Edwards was the party's Vice Presidential nominee, came closer than anyone else to beating Kerry, and has continuously been very near the top of Iowa's polls. Yet the media has all but ignored him -- it's Clinton v. Obama in their World -- except to mock him on the pettiest of grounds, from his hair to his house.

Edwards, Paul and Huckabee are obviously disparate in significant ways -- ideologically, temperamentally, and otherwise. But there is a vital attribute common to those three campaigns that explains the media's scorn: they are all, in their own ways, anti-establishment candidates, meaning they are outside and critical of the system of which national journalists are a critical part, the system which employs and rewards our journalists and forms the base of their identity and outlook. Any candidate who criticizes and opposes that system -- not in piecemeal ways but fundamentally -- will be, first, ignored and, then, treated as losers by the press.

It is very striking how little Edwards' substantive critique of our political system has penetrated into the national discourse. That's because the centerpiece of his campaign is a critique that is a full frontal assault on our political establishment. His argument is not merely that the political system needs reform, but that it is corrupt at its core -- "rigged" in favor of large corporate interests and their lobbyists, who literally write our laws and control the Congress. Anyone paying even casual attention to the extraordinary bipartisan effort on behalf of telecom immunity, and so many other issues driven almost exclusively by lobbyists, cannot reasonably dispute this critique.

Yet because that argument indicts the same Beltway culture of which our political journalists are an integral part, and further attacks the system's power brokers who are the friends, sources, and peers of those journalists, they instinctively react with confusion, scorn and hostility towards Edwards' campaign. They condescendingly dismiss it as manipulative populist swill, or cynically assume that it's just a ploy to distinguish himself by "moving left." In the eyes of our Beltawy press, the idea that our political system is "rigged" or corrupt must be anything other than true or sincerely held.

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Worse, whenever these candidates are discussed, it almost never entails any discussion of the critiques they are making. Is Edwards right that corporations and lobbyists dictate legislation in Washington and that this state of affairs is profoundly anti-democratic and corrupt? Are Paul's criticisms of our bipartisan imperial policies and his warnings of resulting financial unsustainability (and increasing anti-Americanism) accurate? Is Huckabee's claim true that the GOP has obliterated the economic prospects of its own middle- and lower-middle-class followers? Who knows. Who cares. One searches any media discussions in vain for mention of such matters.

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It is true that media coverage can't be explained away by any one simple factor. In presidential campaigns, there are all sorts of factors influencing media coverage -- partisan, ideological, personality, a desire for drama, etc. Some candidates aren't really susceptible to facile categorization -- such as Obama, who has many large corporate donors but also much individual support, and whose campaign arguments are alternatively establishment-soothing and establishment-criticizing. And while Clinton may be accorded inherent respectability because of her present role as an establishment candidate (wife of a former President, a campaign staffed by the media's favorites, flush with corporate cash), other factors -- including the press' residual anti-Clinton hatred -- can counteract those that lead to more favorable coverage.

But those complexities aside, there is a clear dichotomy in both the Republican and Democratic fields -- one which is a microcosm of our political system generally -- of establishment candidates versus anti-establishment candidates. Edwards, Paul and Huckabee are clearly the latter. And that certainly explains a large part of how the media insufficiently covers their campaigns.

By definition, our most influential media outlets are vital parts of the establishment and dependent upon it in countless ways. They perceive attacks on the establishment to be attacks on them. And thus, most journalists are instinctively hostile to candidates which are outside and critical of that establishment. Journalists just don't believe that the system on which they depend and which gives them their access and purpose can possibly be fundamentally broken or corrupt. They are, after all, the establishment press.

Such outsider candidates begin as the nerdy losers to be held up by our campaign journalists for adolescent, giggly mockery. If their campaigns prosper, they become the target of outright hostility (see, e.g., the media's role in the destruction of Howard Dean's candidacy in 2003). In different ways, that has been the arc of media treatment accorded to Paul, Huckabee and Edwards, all of whose candidacies -- for better or worse -- represent something significant in our political culture, represent direct challenges to prevailing conventional pieties and dominant power centers, and yet (or, rather, therefore) are treated as silly jokes when they are discussed at all.

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UPDATE II: Marc Ambinder reports:
On Monday, the Edwards campaign recorded more e-mail sign-ups than almost any day in its history.

Over the weekend, the campaign was forced to add four new servers to handle all the web traffic.

Contributions are up online: Thursday and Friday, the two days after the debate, made for one of the highest 2-day totals they've seen in months. . . .

Not only has Edwards been greeted by unusually large crowds for him, he is outdrawing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton head-to-head. In Des Moines Monday, Edwards drew 400 to Hillary Clinton's 200; in Mason City on Saturday night, Edwards drew 600 to Obama's roughly 300.

Edwards has been a credible, legitimate candidate all along, but has probably received the absolute worst treatment from the press -- measured both by the quantity and quality of the coverage.

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UPDATE IV: A couple of weeks ago, David Sirota wrote :

The media's version of the Iowa presidential caucuses is a story of five candidates and two rivalries. On the Democratic side, it is Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and on the Republican side it is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. But the numbers suggest the most compelling story is about two underdog candidates and one demographic: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), former Sen. John Edwards (D) and the middle class . . .

What explains the unlikely rise of these two dark horses? . . .

Huckabee and Edwards are the only two major candidates staking their campaigns on an indictment of economic inequality, corporate power and corruption.

I would say that Ron Paul's campaign is also grounded in a type of populism as well, though a markedly different strain. Either way, all three candidates are clearly running on an anti-establishment platform and their press coverage reflects that.

And, as is depressingly necessary to note any time one even touches on the presidential race: the point of this post isn't to support or oppose any specific candidate, just to make some observations about the media coverage they prompt and the reasons why.

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