Reporters whine about Obama; ignore McCain attacks on the press
by Eric Boehlert
The Obama campaign hurt Adam Nagourney's feelings.
The New York Times' political reporter recently claimed to have felt the campaign's sting after he wrote a front-page piece on July 16, detailing recent polling that suggested the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama had not dramatically altered views about race in America.
In a New Republic article about the campaign's pushback against his July 16 piece, Nagourney said that the night the story was first posted online he received a terse email from an Obama rep who raised questions about the story. Nagourney responded to the email and thought that the matter had been settled. The next morning he was surprised to see that the Obama camp had released a lengthy, eight-point critique of his article. (The Obama team was not alone; the premise of the Times piece was widely criticized.)
Nagourney "really flipped out" when he saw the Obama release. "They attacked me like I'm a political opponent," the aggrieved reporter told The New Republic, which used the anecdote to kick off a rather breathless analysis of what the magazine claimed was Obama's increasingly rocky relationship with the press.
Headlined, "End of the Affair: Barack Obama and the press break up," the New Republic piece leaned heavily on the notion that reporters were angry with the Democratic candidate and ready to revolt; that Obama's press aides were "alienating" the media by providing "little to no access," being "total tightwads with information," and acting in an arrogant fashion.
And worse, as Nagourney lamented, the campaign treated a reporter like a political opponent.
Oh, brother.
Do I even have to make the obvious point here that Republican politicians, and Republican candidates, have been attacking journalists and treating them like political opponents for years now? (Most notably President Bush, whose contempt for the press has been widely advertised for years.
But over the years, why didn't reporters complain publicly -- why didn't they flip out, as Nagourney called it -- about the naked GOP attacks? I didn't hear many industry-wide cries of consternation then. Instead, it's only considered to be newsworthy, and to be a point of deep media concern, when a Democrat is accused of slighting the press.
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