Your Election 2008 Press Corps

Tiassa · Jan 4, 2008

Election season is a time of double damnation for the People, who find themselves at once lamenting both the political candidates sold to special interests and a press corps sold to ... well, alternately, hubris, political affiliation, special interests, or fill in the blank.

Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald reflects on the state of the Election '08 press corps, and the news isn't good:

For all the talk about the complex ideological, economic and other factors that shape our horrendous political press coverage, it is always important to remember that so much of it ... is attributable to the adolescent, self-absorbed, herd-like behavior of the reporters who travel around with these candidates. Those whom they like personally -- the ones who flatter them or otherwise trigger their desire to be liked -- receive reverent coverage, while those to whom they're personally hostile receive the opposite.

Just contrast the frosty, petulant reception they gave Hillary when she entered their bus with the way White House press reporters at the President's news conferences, for years, cackle at his every attempt at humor and light up with glee when he deigns to engage them in his insulting frat-boy repartee. But in contrast to George the Popular Jock to whom they're grateful for any attention, Hillary is the overly competitive, know-it-all girl at the front of the class with all the answers, and so instead of acting like professionals and just treating like her like a candidate running for President, and taking the opportunity to ask questions when she entered the bus, they instead band together like they're in eighth grade and give the mean, unpopular girl the cold shoulder.

Is it any wonder that Hillary never boards the press bus? Personally, I'd rather be in Siberia than be in Iowa around all of that.

(Greenwald)
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The story is, essentially, that Hillary Clinton made an appearance on the press bus to deliver bagels and coffee, an experience made awkward not only by the apparent fact that this was her first-ever appearance on the bus, but also that not one reporter even attempted to ask her a question.

Greenwald also points to a CampusProgress interview with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

You said somewhere that the perfect symbol for the press corps of the 2004 presidential campaign was Candy Crowley from CNN sitting on the bus with cookie crumbs spilling out of her mouth, talking about how ugly Dennis Kucinich was. Is there any reason to hope for a better media performance this cycle round?

No, it’s all the same. And, you know, it’s not that a lot of these people are bad people. It’s a mistake to go into it saying that these people are all elitist snobs like David Brooks really is. A lot of them are Ivy Leaguers, they all come from a certain class. And you can’t be on the campaign trail unless you work for a massively funded organization. It costs like 3,000 or 4,000 bucks a day to cover the presidential election, just to be on the plane. Some big money has to be behind you. The group of people who end up being on the bus are a group of upper-class people who are all from the same general background, and they’re familiar and comfortable with each other and they’re comfortable with the candidates culturally. They’re living the high life when they’re on the trail, they’re mostly staying in five-star hotels. They get these delicious catered meals served to them four or five times a day. You get chocolates on your pillow, you get the best musicians in the city coming out to play for you everywhere you go. It’s like a big summer camp, like a big field trip.

For these people, with the proximity to power, being able to sit in an airplane with Hillary Clinton or with John Kerry or John Edwards or Barack Obama—that’s like the sexiest thing they’re ever going to be involved with. And it’s a lot of fun for these people. It’s intoxicating. You can’t take some 25- or 26-year-old kid who is just out of college, put him in that environment, and expect him to be totally objective about it. If you break with the pack on the campaign trail and you’re shunned, it’s a very powerful thing. Nobody wants to do it, because to be friendless in that environment is very, very hard. There’s no way out, they’re the only people you ever see—you’re literally roped off from the rest of the world. There’s a real Stockholm syndrome that goes on. As a result of that, you get this collective worldview that develops where the campaign makes sense and everything that the candidates do is taken at face value. And they judge the candidates according to the internal logic of the campaign process, which, to an outsider or to someone looking at it objectively, is completely perverse and fucked up and wrong. But to them, it all makes perfect sense because you never ever are exposed to anything that shines a negative light on it. They never see any other thing.

(Elliott)
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And perhaps most discouraging is the resurgence of that subtle poison, the sexism about this campaign that many people have a hard time accepting. Tracking through the links Greenwald provides, we eventually land at Politico, where Ben Smith reports:

Hillary stepped onto the parked press bus in Indianola for about 90 seconds to deliver bagels and coffee, and I'm not sure what this says about Clinton and the press — the chill, I think, comes from both sides — but it was a strange moment. She expressed her sympathies that we're away from our families and "significant others," tried a joke at the expense of her press secretary, and paused. Nobody even shouted a question, whether because of the surprise, the assumption that she wouldn't actually answer, or the sheer desire to end the encounter.

One reporter compared the awkwardness to running unexpectedly into an ex-girlfriend.

"Maybe we should go outside and warm up," said another, as Clinton exited into the freezing air.

(Smith)
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Or, as Greg Sargent expressed at TPM, "Reporters Agree: Hillary Is A Cold Fish".

The other day, after putting up a post on this topic, I was chastised by someone who I have great respect for. This fellow accused me of a lack of nuance and pointed out that Hillary often does wear a frigid mask towards the press and that the Clinton campaign happily uses the press to its advantage when it can.

Yes, of course these things are true. The point here is not merely that Hillary is nothing but a martyred victim. The point, rather, is that it's deeply weird that reporters and commentators so frequently seem unaware that there's a connection between Hillary's hostility towards the press and their own treatment of her for 15 years.

(Sargent)
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Seriously, what would we say of a headline that "Mitt Romney Is A Limp-Dicked Closet Case"?

But it's Hillary, so it's okay. And it's the American press, so what more do we expect? And that latter, I would assert, is the problem.
__________________

Notes:

Greenwald, Glenn. "Hillary and the mean kids on the bus". Salon.com. January 3, 2008. See http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/03/hillary_bus/index.html

Elliott, Justin. "The Vigilante Journalist". CampusProgress.org. November 28, 2007. See http://www.campusprogress.org/5mw/2226/interview-matt-taibbi

Smith, Ben. "Hillary on the press bus". Politico.com. January 2, 2008. See http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Hillary_on_the_press_bus.html

Sargent, Greg. "Reporters Agree: Hillary Is A Cold Fish". The Horse's Mouth. January 2, 2008. See http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/01/reporters_hilla.php

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Your Election 2008 Press Corps

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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Your Election 2008 Press Corps

Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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