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For Clinton, A Matter of Fair Media
There was also a lack of media pickup when the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported that an Obama aide had sat down next to him and "wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton's post-presidential sex life."
When NBC's David Gregory interviewed Hillary Clinton Monday during her round of morning-show appearances, he briefly noted her endorsement by the Des Moines Register before asking what had happened to her momentum. He pressed six times for a reaction to her husband's telling PBS's Charlie Rose that the country would "roll the dice" if it elected Obama. "So you're choosing not to answer that question," Gregory finally said.
Moments later, when Meredith Vieira interviewed John McCain, who had also won the Register's endorsement, most of the questions revolved around how he could win the Republican nomination despite trailing in the polls, with one query about his temper.
When Obama appeared on "Today" last month, Matt Lauer asked whether Clinton was playing the "gender card" against him, about his pledge to meet with hostile foreign leaders, and whether he thought the country was heading for a recession.
Journalists repeatedly described Obama as a "rock star" when he jumped into the race in January. His missteps -- such as when his staff mocked Clinton's position on the outsourcing of jobs overseas by referring to the Democrat not as representing a state but as "D-Punjab" -- generated modest coverage, but rarely at the level surrounding Clinton's mistakes. Some reporters told Clinton aides when she enjoyed a double-digit lead that she is held to a higher standard as the front-runner.
Obama did undergo something of a media audit earlier this year, with stories focusing on his record in the Illinois Senate and his ties to indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko. But his recent rise in the polls hasn't brought the kind of full-time frisking being visited on the hottest Republican, Mike Huckabee. In fact, much of the coverage of Oprah Winfrey stumping for Obama bordered on gushing.
In an online posting Monday, ABC reported that an Obama volunteer wearing a press pass asked the candidate a friendly question about tax policy at an Iowa event. But several of the assembled reporters huddled and concluded that it was not a story, one of them said. Clinton faced a storm of media criticism over a similar planted question.
Some reporters confess that they are enjoying Clinton's slippage, if only because it enlivens what had become a predictable narrative of her cruising to victory. The prospect of a newcomer knocking off a former first lady is one heck of a story.
Halperin, who surveys political news at Time.com's the Page, says: "Your typical reporter has a thinly disguised preference that Barack Obama be the nominee. The narrative of him beating her is better than her beating him, in part because she's a Clinton and in part because he's a young African American. . . . There's no one rooting for her to come back."
Her campaign faces lingering resentment among many reporters over the lack of access to the candidate and the aggressive style of some of her operatives, who push back hard against stories they dislike. CNN correspondent Candy Crowley received a blistering e-mail merely for asking questions about reports that the former president was unhappy with the campaign's direction.
When Obama was languishing in the polls for months, the media tended to fault him for not being aggressive enough against Clinton, rather than for specific positions or comments.
"The problem here may be that Obama remains reluctant to really go after Hillary's character -- to portray her as unethical and dishonest on some fundamental level," the New Republic's Michael Crowley wrote. Fineman suggested that Obama "attack more in sorrow than in anger" and "argue that Clinton is too polarizing, that she cannot win a general election."
Some accounts have questioned Obama's record but were not widely picked up by other news organizations, despite a full-court press by the Clinton camp. Politico questioned whether Obama might be too liberal for a general election, noting a 1996 questionnaire in which he opposed the death penalty and backed a ban on the manufacture and possession of handguns. The Capitol Hill newspaper also reported that after reporters questioned Obama's declaration that lobbyists "won't work in my White House," he softened his stance at the next campaign stop, saying lobbyists "are not going to dominate my White House."
Clinton benefits greatly from her global celebrity and the novelty of a president's wife trying to win the office he had held. She can command attention at a moment's notice, such as when all six network and cable morning shows jumped at the chance to interview her Monday, just as the five Sunday shows did in September. But the withering spotlight can also lead to the spread of distortions, such as an erroneous radio report that she and her party had eaten at an Iowa diner without leaving a tip.
At an appearance Monday in suburban Johnston, where she was lauded by old friends and people she had helped, Clinton seemed to signal a degree of frustration with her media image.
"I want you to have some flavor of who I am, outside of the television cameras," she said.
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Traveling Wilburys (l to r)
Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison
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