I'm a journalism student. While I only have a few semesters under my belt, I know some of the basics of journalism. Dean Reynolds, a reporter following the John McCain and Barack Obama presidential campaigns, apparently does not. Follow me below the fold. You might learn something.
Here's Dean Reynolds's ridiculous "reporter notebook". along with the money quote that I"ll get to:
Maybe none of this means much. Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama's that is focused solely on victory doesn't have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.
But in politics, everything that goes around comes around.
After most of the previous 12 months covering Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, it was interesting, instructive and, well, relaxing to follow John McCain for the last few days. The differences between the two are striking.
Obama is the big time orator, McCain is the guy who struggles with a teleprompter or even note cards strategically placed nearby. Obama's crowds are larger, more enthusiastic. McCain's events are smaller, but to my eye, better choreographed. And now with the addition of Sarah Palin to some of his events, McCain can boast of crowds that match Obama's in energy.
Where I've bolded, Reynolds flirts with the line of journalistic ethics, more so in the first example. It was relaxing to follow John McCain? Guess what. Reynolds? You're a reporter. You report the news. You don't report about your own life. Any hack at a local paper can tell you that if they submitted a story about how the chairs at a press conference sucked or the lighting was bad, they'd get laughed at by their editor. But the reason I call it flirting is because it's a reporter's notebook. He can take more liberties (even idiotic liberties).
Reynolds starts flirting again with the line:
Baggage calls are preposterously early with the explanation that it's all for security reasons.
If so, I would love to have someone from Obama's campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case.
He's incredulous about the Obama campaign's claim that it's for security reasons. The words "If so" are a GIANT red flag and something that any editor worth his salt would cross out with a big red pen.
But here's where Reynolds goes from teasing and toeing the line to leaping over it in jumps and bounds:
Maybe none of this means much. Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama's that is focused solely on victory doesn't have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.
But in politics, everything that goes around comes around.
What are you insinuating, Reynolds? That because the Obama campaign doesn't pamper journalists with barbecues and free beer and time to file reports that you're going to retaliate? Everything that goes around comes around. What an amazing claim from a "journalist".
Reynolds should be relieved of his post for suggesting that his journalistic standards of fairness are being threatened by petty complaints about the organization of Obama's press group.
These journalists should know: you're not being treated nicely because John McCain just oh-so-loves journalists. When he invited you to his house for that barbecue, you should have said: NO! We're the press! We don't fraternize!
And it's exactly for that reason that Reynolds says that "everything that goes around comes around."
Attend to your needs? You have one need as a journalist: report the damned facts. Everything else is graft.
One of my professors recently told me that if you go to file a story somewhere at a restaurant, for example, and they offer you food, you're supposed to turn it down because it's an ethical gray area. That's the difference between good reporting and Reynolds's childish and unprofessional bitching.
I'm calling on Dean Reynolds to leave the campaign if he finds it so tiring, and if he finds that he becomes resentful to the campaign that doesn't treat him better.
/rant.