So much for press neutrality
Posted on March 1st, 2008
From a NY Times article whether the press has been unfair to Hillary Clinton:
“Part of it is her campaign’s fault,” Andrea Mitchell, the longtime NBC political correspondent, said backstage at the MSNBC debate in Cleveland in Tuesday. “They started with this notion of inevitability. And they were very arrogant.”
So, the press will give crappy coverage to a candidate the reporters think is arrogant? Isn’t that exactly what our media are supposed to not be doing, by their own standards?
Categories: media
I like that a reporter is being honest with an opinion, if they were acting arrogantly to the press why shouldn’t she say it? If a reporter said the same about Bush you wouldn’t think twice about it.
The press is never neutral, I like that they are giving up on a false presumption. About time.
I am capable of holding more than one thought in my head at the same time. One of those thoughts is that the press has treated someone’s candidacy poorly and by extension, the viewing and reading public poorly.
The other is that the candidate in question was unquestionably not the best choice for the job.
It is important to separate these things, because the press shows every sign of not having the same alignment in the next phase of this election.
The modern political press DOES suck, a lot.
I do agree that the media is giving Obama more air time. But I believe it is because he is a winner and we all see that. He holds himself better and more eloquettely. She has whined and complained like a two year old. And then she complains because it’s harder for a woman. It is to some degree harder. I am a white woman, age 45 and have been there in certain jobs. But if you are comparing this to history was she really expecting anything different. We have come a long way as a country as far as racism, sexism, religious choice, sexual preference. But we need to go further and teach our children. I have taught my sons and daughter to respect people no matter what. I think it must have been tough for Hillary to teach Chelsea when she had such a scumbag husband. Let’s face it, woman continue to get treated badly because of men like him. What does a situation like that teach our young girls? To continue on and stay in a bad situation? Maybe because she had an agenda she didn’t think how that made her look like as a woman. But I didn’t hear her complaining when Monica was getting so much press and probably has had much more difficulty going on in her life. Woman need to start thinking about what their daughters and other young woman take with them in life after seeing it happen so close to home. Surely not confidence, trust or honesty. And we need to teach our young men how to be a man and be committed to their word.
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I have never seen a public figure — with the exception of Richard Nixon — by more villified.
The difference is that Nixon deserved it.
What, in the world, has Hillary Clinton ever done to deserve this?
MSNBC has gone out of their way to be needlessly and unprofessionally cruel. Russert, Matthews, little Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, all of them look bad for this.
And why in the world, are people who never even knew there was an election this year, suddenly acting like complete lunatics over a guy with a big smile and a smooth line?
It’s utterly insane.
Obama is not qualified to be the president.
He has not demonstrated any the skills he CLAIMS he possesses.
Where was all the change agent stuff over the past 3 years?? Just keeping his powder dry?
He has no direct experience with military or economic issues, compared to team Clinton.
Of course part of the appeal of a Hillary Clinton presidency is getting Bill Clinton back in the WH.
Of course they will repair the damage done by Bush.
We have no idea who Obama’s advisors will be — just as we had no idea who Bush’s would be — but we were assured that they would be smart.
Nominating Obama is LUNACY!
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[...] David on a NYTimes piece that cacked out when I clicked on the link. [...]
having Bill back in the white house is exactly what they were going for. I won’t vote for a candidate that can’t even manage her own house none the less the white house. He made the moralle come down in this country and now he wants to stand behind his wife. I call that a hipocrit. And quite frankly I don’t think he should have a chance to harrass another woman. Did he even pay for purgery. I bet not, isn’t that being sexist.
Obama at least has the integrity to have respect for his wife and children.
Journalists, who constitute themselves as a “profession” on the basis of some degree of shared high standards, distinguish themselves by telling the truth as best they can regardless of how arrogant they think their subject has been. (Of course, part of “telling the truth” may involve citing their subject’s alleged arrogance.) On the other hand, human beings in general, who have not set for themselves a professional code of conduct, frequently respond to high-handedness with hostility. So I suppose that part of the problem Mitchell identifies involves the Clinton campaign’s assumption that journalists would continue to tell the truth (presumably, that Clinton was the front-runner and would inevitably be elected President?) regardless of how they were treated. Indeed, I can see some people imagining that acting the part of the inevitable President would engender a concomitant subservience on the press’s part, a tactic that almost worked.
I tend to agree that the press currently represents Sen. Clinton unfavorably, to an uneven degree.
But at least part of the problem is that Obama is more attractive, a more accomplished political performer, than is Clinton. I’m willing to entertain arguments that she’s the most qualified candidate as a matter of policy and political savvy, but she doesn’t match his capacity to present a winning persona. The media are affected by that, and report it, and both effects cast Clinton in an unfavorable light.
I am a female and agree that she is getting more press. I however feel she is an experienced woman and knows what can happen in a campaign. She doesn’t seem like shes used her intelligence in the above said campaign. Woman have an obligation to change things but in a classy way not a whiny one. That just adds to the ammunition they use against her. If she is as experienced as she says why didn’t she know these things going in? She was just being arrogant in thinking she had it tied up. Obama has come on to the scene and is saying things we want to hear. We need something to work toward. We need someone to lead. All of us know experience doesn’t always help. There are studies that show sometimes your thoughts are clouded because you can over analyze the situation. I wouldn’t like falling asleep thinking she was taking the call. She has already shown her lack of judgement. It is time for change and Obama will help. But be ready to step up as a whole and help make our nation better. It takes more then a leader to turn things around. It takes people who can look past their differences and realize our children are heading for a very exciting time and need guidance to get there. All on the same footing.
“People got it into their head that if you say something good about a candidate, you have to say something bad about him, and if you don’t, that’s not fair,” Mr. Alter said. “What the Clinton partisans wanted was for us to create a phony balance that was at odds with what our eyes were telling us. That’s not the job of a journalist.”
Amen to that.
There is always the chance that Andrea Mitchell is incorrect in her analysis. That is, the reason Sen. Clinton is getting hammered is because they would have hammered anyone who said and did the things the Clinton campaign has said and done.
“The press” is really just a bunch of people perceiving things and writing about them, not superheroes with special powers.
An Israeli journalist, Yoav Karni, wrote that “Obama=Google, Hillary=Microsoft”
I think that there is much truth in this analogy regarding the popular view and press treatment each of them gets.
http://notes.co.il/karny/
The media must be taken by Barack as are we all. He is better for the camera, the country and the future. Hillary has the word liar in her name doesn’t that say it all.
Unfortunately, part of a politician’s job is to deal with the press–either by managing to obtain favorable press coverage, or by figuring out (as Bill Clinton did) how to win votes and influence despite UNfavorable press coverage.
It would be refreshing if, instead of covering this matter as if it came down to personality points in a beauty contest, the platforms, support, active political history, likely future advisors, strategies for exiting the 100-Year-War, and approaches to the economy, among other ilk, were subjected to careful analysis in the complex context of where the US has been and where it is going. Instead we have moral midgets with press credentials hostage to gawking, leering, and (unamusing) inside joking.
[...] much for…. Hi, I came across a sentence: ‘So much for press neutrality.’ I understand that the sentence is deriding the press neutrality. But I am not sure how ’so much [...]