campaign desk

Guilt Trip

More complaints about the media’s supposed pro-Obama bias

July 23, 2008

What with Barack Obama jetting about the world, buddying up to King Abdullah and all, it has been especially difficult for the McCain campaign to attract media coverage this week. So the GOP candidate’s campaign took a cue from Hillary Clinton and decided it was time to attack the media head on. Its latest salvo is an invitation for visitors to JohnMcCain.com to vote between two soundtracks for a video lampooning the media’s “love affair” with Barack Obama. Yesterday, the campaign issued fake press passes designating reporters on McCain’s campaign bus as the “JV Squad” (that means “Junior Varsity,” presumably), who had been “Left Behind to Report in America.”

It is ironic that John McCain, who has enjoyed some of the coziest press relations of any modern politician, is now positioning himself as a victim of media bias. There may be a kernel of truth to McCain’s complaint, as Campaign Desk noted yesterday in our post about the New York Times rejecting his op-ed about the Iraq War. But Campaign Desk has also noted that McCain got a relative pass for his shifts and ambiguities on Social Security, economic issues, and the environment earlier this month while Obama was frantically defending himself against “flip-flop” charges on Iraq.

But McCain is partially to blame for being overshadowed by his Democratic rival this week—McCain goaded Obama into taking a Middle East trip, Obama made the risky decision to take the bait, and now the media is focusing its coverage on Obama’s travels. The New York Times’s Alessandra Stanley got it right when she wrote, “it’s not pro-Obama bias in the news media that’s driving the effusion of coverage, it’s the news.” Her story’s headline showed why McCain’s visit to George H. W. Bush’s Kennebunkport retreat lost the battle for coverage: “Obama Overseas! In Presidential Mode! Back Home, It’s McCain in a Golf Cart.”

This extra scrutiny would not be advantageous for Obama, of course, if he were not performing so well on his trip. Indeed, even the supposedly liberal New York Times seemed disappointed that Obama made no major mistakes: “After a day spent meeting Iraqi leaders and American military commanders, Mr. Obama seemed to have navigated one of the riskiest parts of a weeklong international trip without a noticeable hitch,” concluded a Times analysis piece headlined “For Obama, First Step Is Not a Misstep.” That’s a nice way of saying this: “Obama Manages Not to Screw Up in Iraq.”

Since the Obama trip is going so well, attacking the media is one of the few options left for the McCain campaign—and it is having some success. The Tampa Tribune, LA Times, and Chicago Tribune were among the papers that ran stories about Obama bias today. US News and World Report‘s website posted “The Media’s Bias Toward Barack Obama Will Hurt Him” at 11:15 AM, followed five minutes later by < a href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/mashek/2008/7/23/the-myth-of-the-media-bias-toward-barack-obama.html" target=_blank>“The Myth of Media Bias Toward Barack Obama.” Both Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd gave voice to McCain’s complaints even as they wrote pieces that reflected positively on his opponent. Even Jon Stewart parodied Obama’s positive press by beginning last night’s coverage of the senator’s trip with an image of the “Not-Yet-President”’s jet trailing rainbows and flowers.

If the McCain communications apparatus can’t use the media to communicate effectively with voters about the economy, Iraq, or health care, at least it’s able to appeal to reporters’ guilt in order to make them repeat charges of bias. That may be what passes for a communications victory at McCain headquarters this week.

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Lester Feder is a freelance reporter based in Washington, D.C., and a research scientist at George Washington University School of Public Health.