(Jake Turcotte)
Will the press hold Obama to account?
By Dave Cook | 11.19.08
When the Obama administration takes office, will it be held to account by the news media despite what critics say was apparent press favoritism toward candidate Obama?
Yes, says Dan Bartlett former counselor to President George W. Bush for communications.
“If the new administration starts slipping in the polls, everyone will start jumping on them,” he said Tuesday evening during a panel discussion about coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.
“The pack mentality does not break down along ideological lines,” Bartlett said at the event sponsored by Vanity Fair magazine at Washington’s Folger Library. “It swings with the attitude of the public.”
The proliferation of on-line news sites covering campaigns means the story lines about individual campaigns “are more contested than in previous elections,” said John Marshall, editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, one of the most influential left of center political blogs. Marshall won the 2008 George Polk Award or reporting on the scandal involving Justice Department firings of US Attorneys.
“More contested is, I think, a good thing,” he said.
While there are more voices commenting on campaigns, “the same motives are driving their habits,” Bartlett argued. “Online media is as dominated by the horse race” as the mainstream media.
And the mainstream media “still control the narrative of the campaign,” Bartlett said.
One reason, according to Marshall, is the relative size of their news budgets. He noted that “our budget is 1/600th of the New York Times” editorial budget. TPM’s total annual budget is about $500,000.
Cable news networks with programs that take a partisan point of view have affected how the public views journalism, said Frank Rich of the New York Times.
Rich writes a weekly 1,500 word essay for the Sunday Times op-ed page and has been strongly critical of President Bush.
“Two very popular, very partisan” cable outlets – Fox News and MSNBC “cast a reverse halo effect on news organizations” that try to provide objective coverage, he said. The 24/7 nature of political coverage on the Internet and cable TV “drives things so much that fine print, filigree gets lost.”
Despite the faster pace of this year’s coverage, there is “no change in the pit of your stomach” when a presidential campaign calls to complain to your boss about the facts in a story, said NBC News political correspondent Andrea Mitchell. “What has changed is the speed and intensity with which it happens,” she said.
Mitchell, who also hosts an hour long program on MSNBC argued that the “campaign this year was not appreciably meaner, just speedier.”
The panel discussion occurred against a backdrop of media self-examination. Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell recently wrote http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111403057.html “The mainstream media were not to blame for John McCain’s loss; Barack Obama’s more effective campaign and the financial crisis were. But some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.”
Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdham, who moderated Tuesday’s panel, said the press often finds itself in the same place as the Fool in Shakespeare’s play King Lear: “They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace…”
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2. Donald J. Uhlinger | 11.19.08
What planet does Jake Turcotte live on? It’s a well known and established fact that the majority of the media simply serve as ***** for corporate/government propaganda. Please read Chomsky, Nader, Zinn, Naomi Klein, etc, etc. To put it another way, to any extent that the media focuses on Barack Obama it will be in the service of, to borrow Dwight Eisenhower’s term, the military-industrial complex, not the earnest needs of a democratic populace. Does Jake Turcotte really need help seeing this? Probably not; he is just laying flowers at the feet of the myth that we have the free and independent press, a press that our forefathers knew is so vital to the proper functioning of a democracy.
4. Doug | 11.19.08
To Donald Uhlinger:
You’re confusing “fact” and “opinion”, but I guess that fits right in with MSNBC and Fox confusing “news” and “editorial” and confusing “reporting” and “commentating”.
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. tom adams | 11.19.08
No, the written, audio and visual news media sycophants will continue their lap dog agendas, covering only the stories that contain the possiblity of making money for them, and keep the ratings high, rather than face the real issues in this nation, and around the world. Anyone care about XDR-TB as a pandemic? Anyone care about our borders, since the previous mentioned issue melds with the border issue…(TB is born from poverty ridden areas of the world), Hmmm, has anyone noticed an entire military command as been stood up for the continent of Africa. Could this have anything to do with footprinting the US around the oil fields? What about the deterioration of our cities, the rampant gang issues, I guess drugs are okay in this country now that the Pelosi machine has okayed it for San Francisco, has anyone thought about our lackluster educational system? My heavens, the list is endless, and any reporter covering the accompanying stories will be siphoned to the back columns and watch the career put on hold, in favor of those who find it far more interesting to do race baiting stories, or highlight something some ridiculous overpaid actor/actress says…as if their thoughts count for anything. Yea okay, I am sure there are many out there who will quickly categorize me as just an old fellow who is angry. For those of you who choose that path, you are without qualification wrong. I simply care about the USA and my children/grandchildren. My parents did not leave such a mess for us, but my generation (the 60’s) sure mucked things up!