I'm not the biggest Hillary supporter but she is my second choice and the enemy of my enemy and all but this is something I’ve noticed and been pissed about for a long time- I’m just glad someone is picking it up (though of course in the article she’s been portrayed as kinda whiny)
Senator's Camp Insists That the Press Holds Her To a Tougher Standard
Clinton's senior advisers have grown convinced that the media deck is stacked against them, that their candidate is drawing far harsher scrutiny than BarackObama. And at least some journalists agree.
"She's just held to a different standard in every respect," says Mark Halperin, Time's editor at large. "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." While Clinton's mistakes deserve full coverage, Halperin says, "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."
Newsweek's Howard Fineman says Obama's coverage is the buzz of the presidential campaign. "While they don't say so publicly because it's risky to complain, a lot of operatives from other campaigns say he's getting a free ride, that people aren't tough enough on Obama," Fineman says. "There may be something to that. He's the new guy, an interesting guy, a pathbreaker and trendsetter perhaps."
Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the accusation of softer treatment is untrue but "the Clinton campaign whines about it so much, it becomes part of the chatter. No candidate in this race has undergone more investigations and examinations than Barack Obama has," he says, citing lengthy pieces in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. "As Obama says, running against the Clintons is not exactly a cakewalk. Their research operation has ensured that if there's any information about Obama to be had, it's been distributed to the media."
The question, of course, is what journalists do with that information.
But now many media accounts are casting her recent dip in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls as a disaster in the making.
"Slipping Away?" said a headline on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Hillary Clinton's campaign is teetering on the brink," Fineman wrote in Newsweek. CBS's Jim Axelrod said her operation is "reeling." The Los Angeles Times said she is facing her "most serious crisis." And a banner headline on the Drudge Report asked: "Is It the End?"
When Clinton's New Hampshire co-chairman resigned last week after raising the issue of Obama's adolescent drug use, the issue itself received scant treatment in the media because Obama had disclosed it in his 1995 autobiography. "He has been able, by luck or planning, to control his own story, because he wrote it first," Fineman says.
The Illinois senator's fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's. When The Washington Post reported last month that Obama used a political action committee to hand more than $180,000 to Democratic groups and candidates in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the suggestion that he might be buying support received no attention on the network newscasts. The Clinton team is convinced that would have been a bigger story had it involved the former first lady.
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.
The onetime leader's recent dip in Iowa and New Hampshire polls has been portrayed as disastrous by many in the media.
Sen. Clinton filing candidacy papers in New Hampshire last month. The onetime leader's recent dip in Iowa and New Hampshire polls has been portrayed as disastrous by many in the media.
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
[snip]
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."
Exactly- it’s such bullshit. And, as if to prove her campaign's point I hadn't even heard of many of those missteps of Barack, and I'm a thousand times more obsessed with politics than the average person. And every reporter, most of whom are white, seem to be afraid of even mentioning race, perhaps for fear of being called racist (I remember a column by Eugene Robinson, who I normally like about something like "Is Barack's ambition uppity" a very deliberate choice of word that seemed to cast a warning that even quizzing Barack about his overwhelming and driving ambition was tantamount to oppressing him and reinforcing the white power structure) or betray the slightest possibility that his position in the polls is a result of the Bradley Effect. Like when Elizabeth Edwards mentioned something like “it’s not John’s fault that he’s white and a man” implying that in this election that was a disadvantage and boring the press jumped all over her, or when John brought up the very valid point that there are still a lot of white people especially in the South who would not vote for a half black guy named Barack he was roasted for using the race card. It’s really fucking frustrating. (not to mention the Clinton campaign staffer who pointed out that Barack's drug use will be an issue in the general election got fired after a media firestorm. Like that is not going to be an issue and this shouldn't be mentioned? Of course it would be an issue. Pointing out the truth, apparently is a valid reason to apologize or resign
Though at least she gets some coverage- the MSM only mentions John Edwards in passing like he has no chance to win (which is why I get so excited and post anytime John is featured in an article somewhere prominent.) And that is the reason I hate the media.
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