This is a great post and I really appreciate you including it here! Presidents and Presidential campaigns’ (both Democratic and Republican) orchestration of the media have been getting worse every year, and I think deprive the public of important information as well as create an incredibly superficial view of politicians. I don’t want to be too harsh on the media here, since I realize the campaigns are very sophisticated in setting up a system where the media complies, but it certainly seems that if the major media outlets could just cooperate with each other a little bit they wouldn’t have to be pushed around so much like we saw here.

For example, I think it’s ridiculous that campaigns can basically keep reporters completely isolated from what’s happening outside of candidate events by packing them into a van well before the events take place. The media outlets should just band together and say, “if you want us to cover your event, then you’ll need to play by our rules.” And if they have a principled reason for not covering an event, then they have the power to tell the public why, and this would probably be a bigger story than the candidates appearances! I know I’m probably a bit naive here, but I’d be really interested to hear from others why this would or would not be possible.

…and they shouldn’t deceive the press by flying the entire press corp to Chicago when the candidate intended all along to stay behind in Washington, D.C.

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Ever since Nixon lost to Kennedy in part because of his on-camera “five o’clock shadow”, candidates have been increasingly “packaged”.

It would be informative as to what Senator McCain thinks about this bit of theater.

Eddie, Crooks and Liars again? You disdain for the GOP and McCain are really getting old.
Personally, I was curious why the PD did not report that Michael Steele was traveling with McCain when he was here in St. Louis this week. I did not know he was associated with McCain’s campaign. Steele is my favorite Republican. He is the African-American that ran for the Senate in 2006 against Bob (the phony conservative) Casey. The sad thing was that the Black community in Maryland did not support Steele then because there was an R after his name.

Centrist, there are plenty of other discussion boards to go to if you want to trot out the same old partisan talking points. But it seems to me that this post is an opportunity to discuss an issue that transcends partisanship; namely, the question of how the media relates to political campaigns. Anyone who thinks that the government should be accountable to the people should care about the tendency of *all* political campaigns to try to restrict and control media coverage.

Esteemed Moderator gets link from well-known partisan web site
Esteemed Moderator posts video appearing to insinuate nefarious media manipulation by McCain campaign.
Esteemed Social Activist, Eco-Terrorist & Facebook coordinator leads-off the first post in unusually thankful, gentle, but high-minded, tsk-tsking tone.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a Trifecta.

…and something smells ah, fishy.

A CENTRIST - good call! btw Steele loss was to Cardin in Maryland

(Esteemed Moderator - how can we get some interesting Center-Right h/t to you?)

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What, no black helicopters?

We’re still hearing a lot of whining, and a lot of focusing on personalities not issues.

Anyone who wants to email stuff to the authors of posts can click on their bylines.

BobZ,

Please get back to me when you’re able to have a conversation like an adult.

To me, this particular incident wasn’t all that big of a deal, but is symbolic of a much larger problem. When I was back in Iowa visiting some relatives prior the caucuses, I ran into a reporter for the Washington Post. He was disgusted because he had just had to follow a Presidential candidate (& entourage) out to the woods for a “quail hunting trip”, only to watch the candidate fire the gun a couple times for some nice photo ops, and then have everyone turn around and drive back. It’s pretty hard to understand why the media feels like they need to cover that kind of silliness. Furthermore, it seems like they should just be honest when they report and say, “candidate X fired two shots and got back into the car.” But there must just be too much of a pack mentality, or too much of a worry that if you don’t go to the photo op you might miss a big story, or that if you don’t report the way other reporters are you might get kicked out of the loop.

It might not seem like that big of a deal, but I think it is directly manipulating the public to focus on really trivial issues during elections, and gives far too much power to the politicians. And furthermore, it can clearly be used for some pretty nefarious purposes when you get the right people in charge. The press has gotten really complacent over the last several years, and I think the only way they can take back some of the power they lost from the politicians is by forming a pact with each other, and not allowing themselves to make concessions in exchange for “special access.”

Or, another suggestion, alluded to above: why don’t journalists report explicitly on the process? If a candidate or politician is far more controlling than any previous candidate, then reporters should do a story saying, “the candidate said that we had to do X, Y, and Z in order to get an interview,” so that the public can decide for themselves whether some kind of manipulation is going on. If you can provide the public with full information of how the process works, there will be much less incentive for politicians to rig the system in their favor, or at least in ways that are easily noticeable.

After I looked at it again, the real gaffe was on the part of the campaign staffer not knowing who the news personnel were.