Press Threaten To Stop Covering Palin Events
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Good Decisions, Media, Palin
Basically, if they don’t get access to ask her questions, they’re telling the McCain campaign they can’t expect coverage because there’s no news value in that.
Personally, I think that’s fair. Let People and Us Weekly cover her then. They’ll put those pictures on the cover. But if McCain really won’t let anybody grill her, then why bother covering events that are nothing more than photo ops?
The campaign had originally indicated that the print reporters following her campaign would be among the small group of journalists allowed to attend the so-called “pool sprays†before Palin’s meetings with dignitaries on the sidelines of the U.N. meetings.The sprays are basically glorified photo opportunities during which journalists can snap photos and film footage and – if they’re lucky – shout a question or two at Palin and her company before she adjourns for private meetings. On Tuesday, those meetings were to include Afghan President Karzai and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
But the imbroglio began developing Tuesday morning when Palin’s handlers informed the small print press contingent covering her campaign that the print reporter designated to cover the events, Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal, would not be allowed to cover the sprays.
The campaign’s reasoning was that there were not going to be questions or statements at the sprays, so they were only appropriate for photographers and cameramen.
25 days and still no press conferences.
Tick tock…
UPDATE:
Looks like CBS is one of the outlets…
Television networks, including CBS News maintain a policy that if they are prevented from having an editorial presence at an event, they will not allow cameras to shoot it.The McCain/Palin campaign’s effort to stifle editorial coverage of the candidate’s meetings with world leaders comes a week after CBS News asked Palin an impromptu question about the AIG bailout, while Palin made an off-the-record stop at a Cleveland diner.
After the Cleveland event, a Palin staffer told CBS News that questions “weren’t allowed.â€
I’m telling you…they’re not going to be able to sell this to the American people. Sure, the Republican base will decry the “biased” media, but all of those independents are becoming increasingly nervous that this VP candidate just isn’t up to snuff.
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September 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
Justin, you are being totally unreasonable.
We already know everything we need to know about Palin to elect her VP. She’s a reformer, Dammit! She said no thanks to the bridge to nowhere, dammit! She stood up to the Republican Party in Alaska, dammit! She stood up to big oil in Alaska, dammit! She’s a pitbull with lipstick, dammit!
What more do you want, dammit? Examples? Examples?
Dammit, dammit, dammit!
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
Haha…gee, you’re right. I guess I am being unreasonable. What more could we possibly want to know? ;-)
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_09_07-2008_09_13.shtml#1220937714
Obama’s history of avoiding the press is documented here
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
We’ll see how this actually unfolds. Can major news outlets REALLY get away with showing only the folks who give press conferences?
Or will they look like petty biased jackasses? Most of the time the actual footage is limited to sound bites of the speeches themselves, not the in-between stuff. And suppose McCain decides not to do press conferences either. Could the news outlets then get away with covering only the democratic events? Nope.
How will CBS et al look when they show Obama footage, and then they don’t show the other guys, and give some sort of an explanation that sounds a lot like “we’re not showing Palin because she won’t play ball with us?”
Oh, and please take care to notice that I’m not speaking to the merits of the policy the media is threatening. I understand that they are used to and want access. I’m talking about how it will LOOK. And the way it will look is that they are taking sides. They also have equal time provisions they can’t run afoul of…
Personally, I’d vastly prefer to see how Palin performs off-script, so long as the media doesn’t persistently play their very smug version of gotcha. But let’s face it, most folks don’t really give a shite about that.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
“…if they don’t get access to ask her questions, they’re telling the McCain campaign they can’t expect coverage…”
Yup. Good luck with that. Sarah Palin is the story, and the MSM knows it. Ignore her at your own peril.
And stand-by for the VP debate. She’s gonna blow the doors off of Biden.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Kranky,
Was it smug gotcha, when charlie asked her about a policy that was a core provision of us going to war, and the focus of her parties international policy for the past 6 years? I think it was a shock to ABC’s interviewer that she clearly had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was. That’s not a Gotcha moment, that finding out the qualifications of the the VP nominee to possibly be president. And the very reason you need to have interviews over scripted speeches.
Let the Liberal Media Bias B.S. rest for just one moment.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Snoop,
I hope for your sake your kidding.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
It would be fair if they stopped covering ALL photo-ops and speaches. If they have no news value, as they say, why do they follow them? There is some justification for Palin picking and choosing who in the media she talks to. They weren’t exactly kind to her before she even spoke and that speaks to prejudicial bias from the outset. Other candidates limit who speaks to them. Why not her?
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I’m pretty sure Us Weekly won’t be covering Sarah Palin stories for a loooong time.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
No, John, he isn’t.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
btw snoop’s right. She is the story right now. and a mystery story works out pretty well. Women buy romance and mystery they say. Maybe women voters will have a strange light in the privacy of the voting booth. Who knows what happens there? One thing I do know is the media don’t follow ME in there! I make the decision alone. Somewhere along the way, people are going to get sick of being told what kind of person you are if you vote this way or that. Palin’s great advantage is that she really is the first person in a long time that I’d call “OF the people.” A lot of people recognize that and that makes her an enormous danger. Refusing to cover her might play right into her hands.
Amusingly, Justin, you say People and Us will cover her, as if that’s the only option people have to news. Don’t you yourself run a blog called… um… Donklephant? Maybe the MSM will force people hungry for news on Palin rightcheer! and in doing so undermine their own positions. It’s already getting thinner.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
12 Noon update: Word has come in that a CNN producer WILL be allowed to accompany the camera at these meetings. This issue appears to be resolved.
AND Almond Dinnerjacket will be on Larry King Live! Hallelujah! See? Almond Dinnerjacket, our good friend whose favorite saying is “Death to America” isn’t afraid of the spotlight.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Allowing one CNN producer into the event, but not allowing them to ask questions, does not resolve this issue.
And by the way folks, the “gotcha” game is par for the course in Washington. You have to play it and you have to be good. That’s been part of being President for decades now.
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
John,
I’m not sure whether the moment you describe is a gotcha moment, but I feel no need to respond, since I never contended that it was. This would be an example of an attempt to “get” me. Whether it is or not, as an anecdote it proves nothing about overall or average intent.
Please notice that I’ve never suggested that the media has no valuable role to play, such as the one you describe. I’m glad whenever the media manages to ask fair and serious questions that need to be asked. Long and leading questions, not so much. Treating one side more lightly than the other? Not so much. Providing fragmented, personalized, and incoherent coverage of important issues not so much. Emphasizing anecdotes over data or comprehensive coverage? Again, not so much.
I’ve played the the pointer-out of counterexamples to the liberal media bias hypothesis on COUNTLESS occasions, so why don’t YOU give the assumption-making BS a rest?
One need not be a conservative to notice that the media often acts in a smug fashion. Nor to notice their idolatry of the gotcha moment. Witness their penchant for asking long and loaded questions. In case you need a primer (and I think you do), neither smugness nor gotcha-hunting are necessarily evidence of liberal media bias. As I have said on countless other occasions, the primary bias of the media is in favor of itself. They like to look good, they like to look like heroes and champions (a-member “”afflict the comfortable’?), and they adore sensation and controversy. That’s why they try constantly to manufacture it.
BTW, I learned about all this stuff in depth at a liberal grad school that taught about media bias. The phrase “liberal media bias” never passed the lips of my instructor, unless it was preceded by the phrase “so-called.” You are very much barking up the wrong tree.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Well Kranky,
The implications are clear in your response. Why should Palin be treated differently than anyone one else. Gotcha moment there or not. The fact is, she needs to be out there showing that she can control the gotcha moments, show that she has a grasp of key issues. That is the point of the interview. If she wants to play with the big boys, she has to take the field. Anything else will basically only prove that she’s not capable of holding her own in Washington. A fact that the other three have proven already.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I don’t understand what these media outlets are trying to do. Does this mean they will no longer show soundbites of Palin stump speeches, or report that Palin meets with this person or that, because she won’t do interviews?
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
John, I made it clear in my post that I was speaking to how the media’s threats would be perceived, and not to the merits of the media’s response. How’d you miss this?
Does she John? I understand that you are speaking ideally. But as I said before, this remains to some large extent to be seen. What happens if a well-coached, well-prepared, knowledgeable, personable, articulate and combative Sara Palin cleans Joe Biden’s clock in the VP debate and makes him look like an old and dated 1970s liberal?
How much would that answer these supposed doubts? Don’t underestimate the possibility that Joe Biden will fall flat on his face, look outfoxed, or even commit an outright embarassing gaffe. How well Palin does there has as much to do with Biden’s deficiencies as with Palin’s alleged strengths. And don’t forget that while many wonks here are hanging on every poll twist that Justin dutifully and eagerly reports as real and not static, not that many average folks are upset that Palin isn’t giving out routine interviews.
These folks who are not upset (or even AWARE!) are far more likely to form opinions based on the debate coverage than the daily blow-by-blows. And to the extent that they follow the dailies, they’ll wonder why Palin isn’t being covered. And as I said before, if the media reports that they are purposely not covering her by way of explanation for her absence on the nightly newscast, most folks won’t really care why. They’ll just think that it seems unfair.
I wish there was a place where I could bet money on that, by the way. Whenever the media becomes the story, which is what they are being tricked into doing here, it tends to go poorly for them. The general reaction of regular folks is usually something like “who do these guys think they are?”
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Allowing one CNN producer into the event, but not allowing them to ask questions, does not resolve this issue.
ABC said it was resolved, not me. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2008/09/sarah-palin-mee.html
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
… and by the way, isn’t she meeting foreign leaders? OK it might be appropriate to shoot that (did the media demand to sit in on confabs between Clinton, Arafat and Barak or they wouldn’t cover the mid-east conflict?) but… ask questions? When? Before or after Karzai? I mean reporting isn’t participating is it? What next? battlefield interviews or we won’t cover this war? If I misunderstand the structure of the event, let me know.
The media are always trying to poke their nose in everywhere (as they should continue to do) but they’ll go to any lengths to get a disaster victim to cry on camera and stuff like that. They have no shame. They have every right to try but they don’t have every right to succeed on their own terms. None of us do. Life is struggle.
Reagan really knew how to tell the media that everyone knew all they wanted was ratings and ad sales and he said it in only five words: “Well, there you go again!”
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Now you know what the press has to endure in NORTH KOREA.
Good job Sarah, you’ve finally gone to the lowest common denominator in the world. You want press freedom according to Kim Jong Palin.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
[...] The McCain camp’s handling of her UN appearance really pushed it over the edge. [...]
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
North Korea. Right. A dictatorship that doesn’t allow the freedom of the press does not compare well to a person’s freedom to avoid the press. She has no power to imprison, kill or dismantle the press. Not a good comparison. If she doesn’t show well by not being a no-show, let her be defeated at the polls: the people too have a freedom to choose! But to compare it to NK? She has no power of that sort.