National - by Ned Resnikoff on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 17:36 - 6 Comments - 81 views
Mainstream journalists have started Raging sharks download.com/newsgroups/spinewatch”>calling John McCain on his lies – and the campaign is lashing back. Their new strategy: accuse any journalist who doesn’t participate in a pro-McCain propaganda campaign of being in the tank for Obama. That’s what McCain did on Morning Joe, and just yesterday, one of his top advisers said that The New York Times was not a legitimate news organization.
The question now is what the media does about it. Do they fight back? Or roll over?
Well, it looks like the Gray Lady is conceding. And columnists like Ruth Marcus, who previously pointed out McCain’s mendacity, are now trying to draw a false equivalency between the two campaigns, as if the fact that Barack Obama has occasionally lied as well excuses McCain’s awe-inspiring truthspeak.
At least a handful of outlets are kicking back, though. CNN, for example, refused to hand Palin a shiny photo op when journalists were barred from covering the event substantively.
In the long run, I don’t see this strategy working out for the McCain campaign – if enough journalists refuse to acquiesce to their whining, then there could be a backlash. There are more important things (re: financial crisis) to be discussing, and with McCain’s post-convention bump now officially gone, it just looks like desperate flailing.
You’re probably wondering – where’s Obama in all of this? It seems like a golden opportunity for him to stick McCain with some of his worst lies. Instead, he’s running lame attack ads about the most trivial lies he can find. That’s what Democratic presidential candidates do, after all. And it’s worked out so well for them the past few years.
Photo by Flickr user Coneee used under a Creative Commons license.
6 Comments
J. S. Williams
As far as Obama is concerned, he doesn’t have to say anything. Why even make an issue of it? What does it possibly has to do, concerning HIS campaign???
If I were Obama, I would be running ads in every battleground state highlighting McCain’s chronic dishonesty. I would have Joe Biden throwing firebombs from the stump. In other words, I would be playing offense. That’s what winning campaigns do. If you’re not playing offense, you’re running defense.
Ned please start writing about football.
What if I just started using strained, football-based metaphors to explain everything? That’s what the cool pundits do.
The coolest pundit I know is Keith Olbermann, who as far as I can tell just makes everything about Harry Potter. Or Chris Matthews, or Pat Buchanan, fuck they’re all cool.
But seriously, we need more Brett Favre coverage.
Funnily enough, Olbermann = former sportscaster.
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This doesn’t mean anything. Warring with the media is pointless. Hillary tried it, saying the good ole boy news media was out to get her. And it didn’t work for her. McCain will try. And it won’t work for him either.
Unless you are an evangelical conservative or a racist, most Americans view the media in a neutral sense. It just is what it is. Saying the media has a liberal bias and is out to hang you, solidifies that base. But it looks like desperation to everybody else.
As far as Obama is concerned, he doesn’t have to say anything. Why even make an issue of it? What does it possibly has to do, concerning HIS campaign??? McCain is the one with the relational problem. Let HIM look like an idiot and take the fall for it.