A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

John Harris and Jim VandeHei are relatively well-known for their book, in which they claim--as I wrote in my review--that politics has devolved into a "Freak Show" that "makes political coverage seem like a constant scandal-watch." This phenomenon is largely blamed on websites like the Drudge Report and the Blogosphere. To be sure, this made Harris and VandeHei somewhat biased in favor of the Old Media, but one would expect that their condemnation of the "Freak Show" would have led them to criticize--as many other had--the tone and tenor of the most recent debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton since so many of the questions focused on the political and the personal rather than on policy.

But they do not. Quite the contrary, they argue that the debate was quite balanced and that to the extent the Obama faction is complaining, it is largely because the Senator did badly and--for perhaps the first time--was directly and seriously challenged by questions that were the consequence of his front-runner status:

My, oh my, but weren't those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week's presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner's personal associations and his electablity. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?

Where indeed. Hillary Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

That's still a good response now that it is Obama partisans--some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places--who are doing the whining.

[. . .]

This is not to say that ABC's performance was flawless. There were some weird questions ("Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"). There were some questionable production decisions (the camera cutaways to Chelsea Clinton, the stacking of so many process questions in the first 45 minutes.)

But there was nothing to justify Tom Shales's hyperbolic review ("shoddy, despicable performances" by Gibson and Stephanopoulos) in the Washington Post or Greg Mitchell's in Editor & Publisher ("perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.") Others, like Time's Michael Grunwald, likewise weighed in against ABC.

In fact, the balance of political questions (15) to policy questions (13) was more substantive than other debates this year that prompted no deluge of protests. The difference is that this time there were more hard questions for Obama than for Clinton.

In making their argument, Harris and VandeHei offer the following startling--and no doubt, accurate--admission:

If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and the Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama's political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)

(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama's speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he's on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)

When was the last time journalists were willing to make such an admission? I suppose that in some sense, such an admission is disturbing to read, since it may be a harbinger of further confusion between reporting and cheerleading, especially if Obama becomes the nominee. At the same time, it is also refreshing to see that certain reporters are willing to acknowledge that the media has been in the tank for Obama for so long. Maybe that admission will serve as a corrective in the future and the media will be willing to stand up to Obama partisans who demand 100% fawning coverage of their candidate (no, I don't suggest that all Obama partisans are like that, but there appear to be a significant amount who are).

The following also caught my eye:

Two of the questions ABC asked Wednesday were related to subjects that have largely been met with media yawns.

One was Obama's casual association with 1960s era radicals and would-be bomb-setters William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn: What is the nature of his relationship?

Another was about a questionnaire from a 1996 legislative race in which he endorsed a ban on handguns. Obama said the questionnaire was filled out by someone else and was in error about his views at the time. But it was later found that his handwriting was on the document: What gives?

One can dispute the relevance of these stories--though it seems certain they will be of interest to many moderate voters Obama would need in the fall--but it is indisputable that if Clinton was facing similar questions they would be the subject of constant and all-consuming coverage. There is an obvious double-standard.

The same statement could be made of McCain. If he was facing similar questions, he too would be bombarded by negative media coverage.

The following passage may be of some cheer to our friends on the other side of the partisan divide, since it appears to show that they too know how to "work the refs." But let there be no doubt that the refs are being worked:

. . . it has only been in this campaign cycle that we have seen the liberal echo chamber--from web sites like Huffington Post and cable commentators like Keith Olbermann--be able consistently to drive a campaign storyline. In the past, it was only the conservative echo chamber--Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh--who regularly drove stories in new media and old media alike. This is a huge shift.

It is indeed. I trust then that we will hear no more complaints about the "right-wing noise machine," since the Left appears to have adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude to the enterprise. And I trust that the Old Media will continue to do the job that Harris and VandeHei have started doing, which is to point out the noise machine on the other side and to push back against its more obvious biases. Or is it the case--as I have asked before--that one side of the partisan divide will only get a wink and a nod in response as it strives to create the very "Freak Show" effect it has pronounced itself as being above?

I am not blaming the Obama campaign for having worked to cultivate a relationship with the media that leaves the latter gasping and cooing over the Senator's talent and political appeal. That is the job of the Obama campaign and both the Senator and his staff have done their job well.

But let there be no doubt that much of the media is in the tank for Barack Obama. The campaign may have intended this outcome and kudos to them for having had the moxie and industry to pull it off. The rest of us, however, have a duty to demand that the media pull back from its position of adulation and subject Barack Obama to the same kind of scrutiny that Hillary Clinton and John McCain get. No one asks the media to go out of their way to harm Obama as a sort of "make up" for past behavior. But that past behavior should not be denied. Nor should it be allowed to continue.