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IssuesCBS Evening News aired only part of Bill Clinton quote about Obama, ignored praise that followed
On the August 5 edition of the CBS Evening
News with Katie Couric, CBS senior
political correspondent Jeff
Greenfield reported that "despite the image of unity, some [Sen. Hillary]
Clinton supporters are still wounded" by the Democratic presidential
primary, "apparently including former President Clinton, who offered a
decidedly lukewarm endorsement of [Sen. Barack] Obama's
credentials." Greenfield then aired a
portion of a recent interview Bill Clinton gave to ABC's Kate Snow, in
which Snow asked Clinton:
"Is he ready to be president?" But, in his report, Greenfield
aired only the first sentence of Clinton's
response, "Well, in -- you could argue that no one is ever ready to be
president," and omitted what followed: "I mean, I certainly learned
a lot about the job in my first year. He's shown a keen strategic sense
and his ability to run an effective campaign. He clearly can inspire people and
motivate people and energize them, which is a very important part of being
president, and he's smart as a whip so there's nothing he
can't learn."
From Greenfield's report on the August 5
edition of the CBS Evening News with
Katie Couric:
GREENFIELD: It was the longest, tightest primary battle in some 30 years,
and at times it was testy.
HILLARY CLINTON [video
clip]: Shame on you, Barack Obama.
OBAMA [video clip]: I
opposed that bill, and you know I did.
GREENFIELD: And despite
the image of unity, some Clinton supporters are still wounded, apparently
including former President Clinton, who offered a decidedly lukewarm
endorsement of Obama's credentials.
[begin video clip]
SNOW: Is he ready to be
president?
BILL CLINTON: Well, in
the -- you could argue that no one's ever ready to be president.
[end video clip]
GREENFIELD: And
while poll numbers suggest that Obama has won the backing of some six in 10 Clinton supporters, that
leaves a whole lot more of her backers who have yet to be persuaded.
From Clinton's
interview with Snow, posted
August 4 to ABCNews.com, the omitted portion of Clinton's response bolded:
SNOW:
Is he ready to be president?
CLINTON: Well, in the -- you could argue that no one is ever ready to be
president. I mean, I certainly learned a lot
about the job in my first year. He's shown a keen strategic sense and his
ability to run an effective campaign. He clearly can inspire people and
motivate people and energize them, which is a very important part of being
president, and he's smart as a whip so there's nothing he
can't learn.
Published: Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:37:00 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the articleIssuesBoehlert: Trust me, John McCain doesn't know what bad press looks like
Did you know the big bad media are beating up on John McCain?
For weeks, the campaign's media debate centered on whether the
press was being too
kind to Sen. Barack Obama -- whether it was fawning over the
Democrat's historic run and drowning him in rapturous coverage. (Recent studies and analysis
have cast that claim into doubt.)
But now the narrative has
been expanded to include the
laughable notion that, following a string of McCain campaign stumbles, including botched staging and
questionable photo-ops, the press has suddenly turned on McCain and is mocking the Republican. That
the same press corps that branded McCain a maverick and for
years worshipped his loose-talking demeanor,
has now soured on the senator. Meaning, the
love is gone.
The New
York Observer trumpeted that trend last
week when it published a front-page article detailing the transformation from
McCain-as-media-hero to "McCain-as-marginalized-victim" who's suffering "rough treatment" from journalists. The Observer piece came complete with
an illustration that showed the
press as a two-by-four-wielding playground bully setting his sights on a vulnerable and
childlike McCain. (Run Johnny, run!)
Aside from asking for
the world's smallest violin, I'd like
to make the point that rather than bemoaning the
type of press attention McCain has
been attracting, most recent Democratic candidates for
president, who were pummeled and
even savaged by the press, would pay
for the kind of respectful coverage McCain has accumulated this summer. They would
be rejoicing if the press ever treated them as kindly and as softly as it has
McCain this campaign.
Let me put it another way: When
McCain gets regularly portrayed in the press as a serial liar the way
Al Gore was in 2000, then he can complain about the press. When McCain is portrayed as an angry lunatic the way
Howard Dean was in 2003, then he can complain. When
McCain's war record is dragged through the mud while the press looks on for weeks too
frightened to call out
the partisan accusers, the
way John Kerry's military record was,
then he can
complain. When McCain's campaign is defined by his
haircut the way
John Edwards' was, then he can
complain. When McCain is portrayed as a cackling witch the way
Hillary Clinton was this
winter, then he can complain. When
McCain is portrayed as arrogant and presumptuous the way Obama is today, then he can complain.
But pretending that when
the press simply chronicles McCain's disjointed campaign means that reporters and pundits have
somehow turned on the
candidate -- that they
are attacking him and
piling on -- is just ludicrous.
It's true the McCain campaign has
received some unkind press notices in recent weeks, but that's because the
McCain campaign has been
very poorly run. As The Atlantic's conservative blogger Ross
Douthat conceded last week, "John McCain is running a staggeringly inept campaign."
That's what
Republican boosters were saying about the
Arizona senator. But
simply acknowledging the campaign's missteps, however gingerly the
traditional media have done it in recent weeks, does
not mean the press is being nasty to the candidate or attacking the GOP.
What's happened in recent White House campaign cycles is that people have
become so accustomed to the press openly mocking the
Democrat that when that
pattern is altered, however slightly, as it's been in 2008, it's perceived to be a massive shift.
Since the media are simply not trashing the
Democratic nominee as aggressively as in campaigns past, conservatives are claiming that's being unfair. They
liked the old model where the press effortlessly adopted GOP
spin about Democratic candidates being phony and untrustworthy. That worked for the
GOP. Today, that model has been modestly tweaked, and
the GOP is crying foul.
That's expected. But it was distressing to see the New York Observer buy
into the spin about the media turning on McCain. After all,
the evidence to support the
meme is quite thin. Yes, partisan Republican Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, assured the
Observer that McCain "got slapped upside the
head" by the media. But
in terms of pinpointing actual instances of mockery, the Observer didn't seem to have much to work with. It did cite this
recent cable chatter scene:
"On a recent segment on Fox News' The Beltway Boys ... Morton Kondracke, countered a little later with
this: "McCain did not
have a great week. His visual was riding around in a golf cart
with old George Bush
the First." Mr.
Kondracke waved his hands in the
air, comically mimicking Mr.
McCain at the wheel of a golf car.
Mr. [Fred] Barnes crossed his
arms and
chuckled.
That was the Observer's strongest piece of evidence of the media "mockery" -- of the "rough treatment" -- that
McCain has had to endure? Kondracke waved his hands and Barnes chuckled.
Oh, brother. I mean, how does McCain make it through the days
with that kind of media venom flowing in his direction?
I can't help thinking if Gore wouldn't have preferred suffering
that kind of "mockery" as opposed to having MSNBC's Chris Matthews announce that Gore
was so desperate to
be president in 2000 that he would gladly "lick the bathroom floor" to get elected. Go read the Daily Howler's 2000 archives for a catalog that's as long as a fire station grocery list
of the jarring insults and
attacks the press leveled against Gore,
who, at times, was
portrayed in the press as pathological. And then
compare those attacks to the light-as-a-feather mockery that
McCain has supposedly had
to deal with lately and
tell me which is tougher.
It's the same reason that
I bet Clinton would have gladly been the
target of a Fox
News anchor's chuckle rather than
having The New York Times print a news section analysis of her
laugh and then watch lots of well-paid, deep-thinking pundits and
reporters at The
Washington Post, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Cincinnati Post, National Public Radio,
Time.com, Reuters, Associated Press, Politico,
ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, among others, pontificate about her humorous
outbursts.
Indeed, way back in November 2007, months before the
press really let loose on her candidacy, Greg
Sargent amassed a sort of Greatest Hits of the media's phony attacks on Clinton. Read
the list and try
to think of a single event in the last two
months in which the
press, which we're told
has turned on poor
John McCain, ever concocted nonsense like
this and targeted the
GOP front-runner:
*
Hillary's alleged failure to tip the Iowa waitress
* Hillary's phony southern drawl
* The supposed 20-year-plan by Hillary and Bill
to take over the
world, or at least deliver them
both the Presidency, as alleged by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta and denied by
the one person who supposedly had first-hand knowledge of their dastardly plot
* The baseless claim that Hillary eavesdropped on political opponents in 1992
* The bogus media claim that Bill Clinton accused Hillary's Dem
rivals of "swiftboating" her
* The media's hyping of Hillary's supposed refusal to release Presidential records, a tale that was
taken apart in today's Washington Post and which wasn't matched by any
similar media outrage about Rudy [Giuliani's] refusal to release his Mayoral papers.
P.S. Don't forget the
great cleavage debate of 2007.
Yet we're supposed to believe the bullying press is now mocking McCain? Give
us a break.
You'll also note that
with the Democratic trend with
Gore, Dean, Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, and
Obama, the caustic coverage candidates have
had to endure almost always revolved around questions of character; being a liar, a phony, unhinged, or
arrogant.
By contrast, there has
not been a single, sustained press narrative pushed by the
media during this entire campaign season that
has ridiculed or called into
question McCain's character. Not
one. For the press, that kind of
character exploration of McCain remains taboo. But when covering Democrats,
character assassination remains
routine.
Meanwhile, I can't help
wondering if the press is being tagged as mean and nasty simply because reporters belatedly challenged one
of McCain's many campaign lies. Because they decided to come out of their Bush-era shell and actually engaged in a rare bout
of fact-checking, or what
used to be called reporting, when
a Republican tried to smear the character of his Democratic opponent.
The lie McCain peddled in a television ad was that Obama canceled a trip to visit wounded U.S. soldiers in Germany because the
Pentagon told him he couldn't bring reporters along with him. After some
initial hesitation, NBC, along with The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, finally reported that McCain's central allegation was
not supported by the
facts.
On the front page on July 30, the Post's Michael Shear and Dan Balz reported
that McCain continued to make the allegation, "despite no evidence that
the charge is true." That might seem like a simple thing. And
unfortunately the press still allowed McCain's planted lie to dictate campaign
coverage last week. But for the Beltway media amidst a White House campaign,
the Post's reporting was
different.
As the Daily Howler noted:
"Shear's report represents a major change in the mainstream press culture of the past
sixteen years. In this
report, the Washington Post, on its front page, directly challenges the latest slimy "character" charge against the
latest Dem White House hopeful. This represents a major change in the way this
newspaper does business."
Quite simply, the Republican Party cannot afford to have
the press become aggressive fact-checkers out
on the trail. So in an attempt to intimidate the press back into the semi-crouch that
has defined campaign journalism for
the last decade, conservatives whine about how mean and
nasty the media are
for attacking McCain.
But the far-fetched claim just
doesn't hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it directly contradicts very recent
testimonials from starry-eyed journalists on the McCain beat. "Covering McCain is a blast," wrote Ana Marie Cox, in a recent issue of Radar. "He genuinely likes reporters: He'll joke with
us about our drinking habits, playfully request our
cell phones in the
middle of a call and
tell some
unsuspecting editor or parent that the
phone's owner has just
been hauled off to rehab, and engage in gleefully sarcastic banter about both
our colleagues and his."
And on MSNBC last
week, Time's Mark Halperin, sounding like
somebody putting off making an unwanted dentist appointment, assured viewers that, "McCain deserves scrutiny and he'll get some." Halperin couldn't quite say
when that
pending scrutiny of McCain would take
place. (Stay tuned.)
The truth is that
the press not only
has not turned on McCain but it continues to act
as a key campaign ally
in a way it does not for
Democrats.
I'm trying to imagine back
during the 2004 campaign, when the debate about Iraq was raging: What if candidate
Kerry had sat down for an interview on the CBS
Evening News and promptly made an egregious factual error regarding
the timeline of events there? Does anybody really think that rather than air
Kerry's blunder, and in fact trumpet the misstep as news, that CBS would
have cut away from his botched answer and replaced it with three separate
spliced-together statements made by Kerry, one of which was the answer to a
different question, and then not tipped off viewers that the interview had been
heavily edited? Does anybody think CBS would have extended Kerry that courtesy?
That's exactly the kind
of oversized life preserver Katie Couric's Evening News threw McCain when
he bungled the timeline of the U.S. military's surge in Iraq during a CBS interview. In an extraordinary act of kindness, Couric and
company covered for McCain -- and violated CBS' ethical guidelines in the
process.
Yet today we're told
the press has turned on the GOP candidate and
that it's mocking John
McCain?
Trust me, if the
press had turned on Al Gore like
that in 2000, he'd be finishing up his second term
as president right now.
Published: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:54:12 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the articleIssuesCBS' Reid didn't note that experts, including Energy Dept., have rebutted assertion that expanded offshore drilling "will bring prices down"
During the July 28 edition of the CBS Evening News,
correspondent Chip Reid stated, "[Sen. John] McCain says he now supports
increased offshore drilling, as do 73 percent of Americans, because, he says,
more oil supplies will bring prices down." After airing McCain's
attack on Sen. Barack Obama for opposing efforts to lift a congressional
moratorium on certain off-shore drilling, Reid went on to claim, "Obama
says offshore drilling harms the environment, and looks to the past, not the
future." But Reid provided no indication that, beyond simply expressing
concern that offshore drilling "harms the environment," Obama has
directly rebutted the suggestion that "increased offshore oil drilling
... will bring prices down," by pointing to the conclusion of
"most experts, even within the Bush Administration," that doing so would
not affect gas prices for many years. Reid did not note either that Obama had
rebutted the suggestion that offshore drilling "will bring prices
down" anytime soon or that the Department of Energy has done so as well.
After President Bush lifted the presidential moratorium on
certain offshore drilling on July 14, Obama issued a statement that read, "If
offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term
strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration,
regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within the Bush Administration,
concede it would do neither." Indeed, as Media Matters for
America has repeatedly documented, in 2007, the U.S. Department
of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) considered the likely
effects of allowing the congressional and executive moratoriums on certain
off-shore drilling to expire in 2012 and estimated that access
to offshore areas currently off limits "would not have a significant
impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before
2030."
From the July 28 edition of the CBS Evening News with
Katie Couric:
REID: As important as jobs and taxes
are, polls show it's the price of gas that really gets voters mad.
That's where McCain kept his focus today, as he toured an oil field in California.
McCAIN [video clip]: So offshore drilling --
drilling is something we have to do.
REID: McCain says he now supports
increased offshore drilling, as do 73 percent of Americans, because, he says,
more oil supplies will bring prices down. He says it's time for Obama to
get on board.
McCAIN [video clip]: He is the Dr. No of the --
America's
energy future.
REID: But Obama says offshore
drilling harms the environment, and looks to the past, not the future.
OBAMA [video clip]: If we had made
investments in alternative energy and fuel efficiency, we'd be less
vulnerable to price shocks.
REID: So from gas prices to the
housing crisis to the deficit, there are now so many economic challenges
confronting the nation that, as one key senator put it today, whoever is the
next president will have a very, very sobering first week -- Katie.
Published: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:36:55 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the article 
