To Hillary Supporters: What We're Up Against
Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 02:18:34 AM PDT
For those of us who support Hillary Clinton, it's something we at first dismissed, then perhaps feared was true, and now realize can no longer be denied.
In this campaign, the refs are crooked.
For whatever reason, the press as a whole is implacably hostile towards Hillary Clinton. Their coverage of her campaign is relentlessly negative, and reporters are openly rooting for her downfall. Attacks on her are given full voice while any response is criticized as going negative. In terms of political coverage, it is a mugging on par with that administered to Al Gore in 2000.
Is this merely sour grapes from a supporter? No. In a field in which objectivity and balance are paramount virtues, even independent critics of the press acknowledge that something is seriously wrong. To list only a few examples (some of these have been brought up before, but I felt it was helpful to collect them together):
[Obama supporters: This is not meant as a criticism of Obama, but a defense of Hillary Clinton.]
Craig Crawford, Jan. 26:
You know, I have sat down here in Florida for the last month. And I have watched the coverage, and I really think the evidence-free bias against the Clintons in the media borders on mental illness. I mean, I think when Dr. Phil gets done with Britney [Spears], he ought to go to Washington and stage an intervention at the National Press Club. I mean, we've gotten into a situation where if you try to be fair to the Clintons, if you try to be objective, if you try to say, "Well, where's the evidence of racism in the Clinton campaign?" you're accused of being a naïve shill for the Clintons. I mean, I think if somebody came out today and said that Bill Clinton -- if the town drunk in Columbia [South Carolina] came out and said, "Bill Clinton last night was poisoning the drinking water in Obama precincts," the media would say, "Ah, there goes Clinton again. You can't trust him.
Eric Boehlert, Jan. 15, on how the press botched New Hampshire:
The truth is the press didn't want to acknowledge the ground was shifting because it liked the erroneous storyline that the Clinton campaign was imploding. (Paging Matt Drudge.) The press was practically celebrating it on the eve of the New Hampshire vote. That's a result of the open contempt many journalists express for Clinton and her campaign.
Quoting the New York Observer:
Reporters sandwiched together in the scrum studied their BlackBerrys and rolled their eyes. One whispered to another sarcastically, "Can you feel the excitement?" Another asked: "Can you please pour some Drano in my mouth?" They began taking bets on who in the audience would fall asleep first. Former CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer said to the rest of the pack: "This event is taking so long we could all grow beards by the end of it."
Quoting the New Republic:
I was at a dinner tonight with various political reporters who are up here to cover the happenings, and it was pretty funny how giddy/relieved they were at the prospect of a McCain-Obama general election campaign, as opposed to, say, a Romney-Clinton one. Suddenly, the next 11 months of their lives look a whole lot more enjoyable.
E.J. Dionne, Jan. 25
The press is tougher on Hillary Clinton than it is on Barack Obama; the old, irrational Clinton hatred is alive and well in certain parts of the media; Hillary Clinton gets hit harder when she criticizes Obama than Obama does when he goes after her.
Dana Milbank, Dec. 31, being interviewed by Howard Kurtz:
MILBANK: The press will savage her no matter what, pretty much.
KURTZ: If she wins [Iowa]?
MILBANK: Well, obviously if she wins by any great margin -- the press with Hillary Clinton, it's a poisonous relationship. And I visited the various campaigns out there. It's a mutual sort of disregard. And they really have their knives out for her, there's no question about it out there. So --
KURTZ: And to what extent do you think that is affecting the coverage of Senator Clinton?
MILBANK: I think it unquestionably is. And I think Obama gets significantly better coverage than Hillary Clinton does, and given an equal performance he'll come out better for it.
KURTZ: Is this because journalists like Obama better than Hillary or --
MILBANK: It's more that they dislike Hillary Clinton. There is a long history there, her antagonism towards the press. It's returned in spades. And it is a venomous relationship that I see out there.
Ben Smith, Jan. 2:
Hillary stepped onto the parked press bus in Indianola for about 90 seconds to deliver bagels and coffee, and I'm not sure what this says about Clinton and the press -- the chill, I think, comes from both sides -- but it was a strange moment. She expressed her sympathies that we're away from our families and "significant others," tried a joke at the expense of her press secretary, and paused. Nobody even shouted a question, whether because of the surprise, the assumption that she wouldn't actually answer, or the sheer desire to end the encounter.
One reporter compared the awkwardness to running unexpectedly into an ex-girlfriend.
"Maybe we should go outside and warm up," said another, as Clinton exited into the freezing air.
Howard Kurtz, Dec. 19
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.
Quoting Mark Halperin:
She's just held to a different standard in every respect. The press rooted for Obama to go negative, and when he did he was applauded. When she does it, it's treated as this huge violation of propriety... the press's flaws -- wild swings, accentuating the negative -- are magnified 50 times when it comes to her. It's not a level playing field.
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.
What do we conclude from this?
The press has it in for Hillary Clinton. Not only that, they know it, and they don't care. It makes her job and our hopes for her success much harder.
But do we give up? Do we give in and start buying into their narrative? Maybe Hillary Clinton is as bad as they say? Hell no. Hillary Clinton is a fighter, and she'll fight the media every step of the way. We all know that we're not entitled to the nomination or the presidency. We may not get there because the country prefers a different voice and different ideas. But we're not going to sit idly by and fail because the media has lost all sense of professionalism.
At this point let me just quote from the end of Bob Woodward's book, The Agenda:
They had done much since the day in August 1991 when she awoke with the realization that he would run and win. In the spring of 1994, they were out publicly talking about the successes--the economic plan, trade agreements, other legislation, and health care, which was still to come. In private, they talked about the pressures and attacks. So on one hand, it was better than ever; on the other, worse than ever.
"We're going to keep on going," he said to her one day. "They're never going to stop us."
[To Obama supporters: This is meant as a defense of Hillary Clinton and a criticism of the media. It is not meant to be an attack on Barack Obama, nor is it meant to imply that he is in any way responsible for the tone of the press coverage of Hillary Clinton.]
