Politico

Post Allows Anonymous McChrystal Aides to Impugn Rolling Stone

Date: June 27, 2010

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Anonymity, Off the record, Politico, Washington Post

This appears to me to be a flagrant misuse of anonymous sources. Credit The Post for not trying to make a lame excuse as to why it allowed anonymous McChrystal aides to impugn the integrity of Michael Hastings, who wrote the notorious article that led to the general losing his command and probably his career. But the fact that the Post allowed anonymous sources to attack Hastings and his editors is unconscionable:

[O]fficials close to McChrystal began trying to salvage his reputation by asserting that the author, Michael Hastings, quoted the general and his staff in conversations that he was allowed to witness but not report.

…A senior military official insisted that "many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [Hastings] a sense" of how the team operated. The command’s own review of events, said the official, who was unwilling to speak on the record, found "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made in situations in which ground rules permitted Hastings to use the material in his story.

A member of McChrystal’s team who was present for a celebration of McChrystal’s 33rd wedding anniversary at a Paris bar said it was "clearly off the record." Aides "made it very clear to Michael: ‘This is private time. These are guys who don’t get to see their wives a lot. This is us together. If you stay, you have to understand this is off the record,’ " according to this source. In the story, the team members are portrayed as drinking heavily.

…Officials also questioned Rolling Stone’s fact-checking process, as described by [Rolling Stone executive editor Eric] Bates in an interview this week with Politico. "We ran everything by them in a fact-checking process as we always do," Bates said. "They had a sense of what was coming, and it was all on the record, and they spent a lot of time with our reporter, so I think they knew that they had said it."

These anonymous sources even provided copies of emails between a Rolling Stone fact-checker and McChrystal media aide.

In my view, there is no reason for this article at all except to allow anonymous allies of the general to strike back—without bearing any responsibility for their attacks. It’s as if the newspaper said, “We’ll do your dirty work for you.”

That The Post allowed this reinforces the point Politico made in an earlier post subsequently scrubbed of the inside baseball admission. The point was an admission that what made Hastings’ story so dramatic was that usually reporters hold back things they hear that might destroy their relationship with the institutions they cover. In other words, we can’t trust what the Post or other newspapers tell us because reporters and editors don’t want to upset their cozy relationship with the people they cover.

Did Politico Hide the Dirty Laundry?

Date: June 25, 2010

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Ethics, Politico

In case you missed it, an interesting story about Politico and the scrutiny it’s received for scrubbing an “inside journalism” quote from an earlier version of a story about Rolling Stone’s Gen. McChrystal article. Jay Rosen at Press Think has the details. CJR follows up.

The Press Honeymoon with Obama is Over

Date: April 29, 2010

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Cable News, Mainstream Media, NY Times, Political Labels, Politico, President Obama, Washington Post

Politico yesterday, in one of the longest articles I’ve seen there, lays out the media criticisms of the Obama administration. Their complaints range from lack of access and favoritism to calls not returned and obsessive control of the message. The bottom line, as is expressly feared in the article, is that the Fourth Estate comes off whiny. Worse, it may be they have only itself to blame.

In the piece, writers Josh Gerstein and Patrick Gavin chronicle the widespread complaint among reporters that the Obama White House controls the message by going over the media’s heads with videos and other forms of messaging that aren’t filtered by journalists.

One current focus of press corps ire are gauzy video features the White House’s staff videographer cranks out, taking advantage of behind-the-scenes access to Obama and his aides, such as a recent piece offering “exclusive footage” of first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden touring Haiti.

“I think someone out there might mistake them for news, as opposed to slick publicity handouts for the White House,” said Compton. “To me, they’re mocking what we do.”

So they’re complaining about not having access to softball tours of the first lady and Mrs. Biden? Even so, who can blame the administration? Any organization wants to control the message. It’s the reporters job to find the real news, not wait for the White House to hand them it.

Reporters perceive the administration favors the New York Times, whose editorial page clearly supports most of Obama’s agenda.

“It’s clearly the case that they’re playing favorites,” said Bloomberg’s Chen, when asked about the White House’s relationship to the Times. "It’s kind of par for the course. Some people understand that — none of us really like it — but that’s the way the administration does business."

But why didn’t those same reporters complain when the Bush folks often used interviews on FOX News, sure to be solicitous, to its advantage?

Gibbs denied an “unnecessary advantage” to the Times, while saying it has far more reporters covering topics of interest to the White House than most outlets. Times Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Dick Stevenson said it would be “absurd” to suggest the Times doesn’t get access in certain instances that others don’t.

“[F]ar more reporters covering topics of interest” is a key phrase. Not that I think it is the real reason, but it may be a subtle jab to news organizations that give undue emphasis on process rather than substance. Let’s face it. The Times, The Washington Post and a few other newspapers drive the public policy conversation. Television network news operations, cable talk shows and most newspapers around the country do little original reporting on national issues and instead follow the leads or run syndicated articles, often from the Times or Post. And those stories are often about process, not policy.

Most interesting to me is the pushback from the White House when stories are not favorable. Press secretary Robert Gibbs and his staff even complain over a word or phrase. Gibbs defends his aggressiveness, even over the smallest thing, because lies take on a life of their own and are hard to kill, as Brendan Nyhan has described. Gibbs pushes back in the Politico article.

“The way we live these days, something that’s wrong can whip around and become part of the conventional wisdom in only a matter of moments, and it’s hard to take it, put a top on it and put in back into the box,” Gibbs said. “That’s the nature by which the business operates right now. … This isn’t unique in terms of us, and it’s likely to be more true for the next administration.”

Asked about some of the more aggressive tactics, including complaints to editors, Gibbs said, “We have to do some of those things. … I certainly believe anyone who goes to an editor does so because it’s something they feel is very egregious. I don’t think people do it very lightly.”

Some reporters say the pushback is so aggressive that it undermines the credibility of Obama’s aides. “The willingness to argue that credible information is untrue is at its core dishonest and unfortunately calls into question everything else the press office says,” one White House reporter said.

How much to push back one should exert is a question that has been discussed on public relations forums on LinkedIn. Some, myself included, believe in strong pushback, not only on political issues but also for corporate clients. If a story about a company or its product, services and standing in the industry is unfair, some PR practitioners think pushback is counterproductive and will result in even tougher coverage from reporters. Maybe. Clearly, unhappy reporters may have a hair trigger.

“They ain’t seen nothing yet,” the longtime ABC reporter [Ann Compton] said. “Wait till they have to start really circling the wagons when someone in the administration is under attack, wait till there’s a scandal, wait till someone screws up, then it’ll get hostile.”

There are two other important questions not raised in the article. The first is, has the press marginalized itself because of its focus on conflict and partisanship? In the comments section of this article Tom Genin writes,

Seeing as the president wins on campaigning and loses on policy with the American people as a whole, there’s no reason or upside for him to get into the minutiae of policy with a reporter.

Oh, were that policy minutiae be what the press wants to get into. Actual policies, their possible impact or the experience of other countries that may have employed them are rarely the subject of articles generated by the White House press corps. Frequently, all they are reporting is the spin. Too often, the WH press corps write stories that outline the administration’s point of view, counter opinions from members of the other parties and frequently include quotes from organizations that are usually described as “liberal” or “conservative,” sending a signal to readers of both camps about whether they should believe their point of view. Once a conservative sees “liberal” describing an organization, they are likely to dismiss the quote as partisan BS—and vice versa. It has gotten to the point where any partisan can make any claim and it largely goes unexamined by the press, until it has gained a viral constituency that will believe it no matter how the press later refutes it.

Writing or saying, “but that’s not true,” after a false claim is rarely done by today’s journalists. Thus, if readers can expect only tit-for-tat reports, why read them? If the news consumer can’t find needed information in a story, why waste the time? In fact, I am struck by how much more useful information I find in columns,which are usually designed to have a point of view. That’s where the fact checking often goes on, as well as sites such as PolitiFact.com. Wasn’t there a time when a reporter, sent information he knew to be not true, wouldn’t publish it?

University of Maryland law professor Sherrilyn Ifill thinks the press can only blame itself.

Is this the same White House press corps that was too cowed to ask a follow-up question of George W. Bush for e
ight years? The press corps that had so abandoned its professional obligation to press the president for the truth that anyone who could raise their hand and throw a soft lob at the president could pose as a member of the corps (remember some-time male escort’s Jeff Gucker Gannon stint as member of the corps?). The same press corps that gave away the critical role of the war correspondent in the first Gulf War under George H.W. Bush (with Cheney as Defense secretary) and accepted instead the "organized tour" for reporters, and then under George W. Bush (this time with Rumsfeld at Defense) the "embedded reporter" control on war reporting? The corps that spent two years questioning President Clinton about a certain intern, rather than about the rising threat of extremist terrorism in the Middle East?

If the Obama administration is taking a firm hand with the White House press corps, then perhaps its time for the corps to engage in a little "truth and reconciliation" about its past failures to vigorously engage the president on the issues most important to the American people. Otherwise it’s hard to work up sympathy for a group of reporters that have participated in their own marginalization.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research agrees.

The job of the White House press corps is to reporting [sic] on issues that matter to the American people, not what President Obama had for breakfast. There is nothing that the Obama administration has done that prevents the press corp [sic] from analyzing proposals for health care reform, financial regulation, plans for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or doing any other part of the job. It seems that the press is upset because he is forcing them to be real journalists instead of gossip columnists. Too bad.

Which brings me to the second question: Has the White House press corps outlived its usefulness? Donald Johnson, a blogger at Businessword, authors this view in the comment section of the Politico article:

If the W.H. press corps wants to make itself as important as it thinks it is, it should do original reporting and go around the W.H. Meanwhile, why do news organizations waste time and money on staffing the W.H.? There is no there there.

At the very least, should news organizations invest in keeping reporters holed up in the White House waiting for the latest morsel from the administration? Are reporters serving any useful purpose asking the chief mouthpiece of the administration to explain and defend its position, if they are not going to put that information under a microscope to ascertain its validity? Certainly, a select, rotating pool of reporters could ask such questions while the others are spending more time examining the issues.

Finally, I am not defending the Obama White House withholding critical public information the public has a right to know. But this article isn’t about that. It’s about the press wanting special access. Take the information coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., critically analyze it, confirm it if you can, find the holes in it if they’re there, get the views of others and not just the political establishment and report it.

And stop whining.

Saving CNN—and the Profession

Date: April 1, 2010

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Cable News, CNN, Good idea, Hypocrisy, NPR, Political Labels, Politico, Television

All right, it’s a grandiose headline, but what CNN might do could at the very least show a way for journalism.

In “How to Fix CNN” in yesterday’s Politico, the only intelligent, original ideas came from Jay Rosen:

[Rosen’s] alt line-up for CNN prime time looks like this: (Please excuse my jokey titles…)

7 pm: Leave Jon King in prime time and rename his show Politics is Broken. It should be an outside-in show. Make it entirely about bringing into the conversation dominated by Beltway culture and Big Media people who are outsiders to Beltway culture and Big Media and who think the system is broken. No Bill Bennett, no Gloria Borger, no “Democratic strategists,” no Tucker Carlson. Do it in the name of balance. But in this case voices from the sphere of deviance balance the Washington consensus.

8 pm: Thunder on the Right. A news show hosted by an extremely well informed, free-thinking and rational liberal that mostly covers the conservative movement and Republican coalition… and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are right leaning. The television equivalent of the reporting Dave Wiegel does.

9 pm: Left Brained. Flip it. A news show hosted by an extremely well informed, free-thinking and rational conservative that mostly covers liberal thought and the tensions in the Democratic party…. and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are left leaning.

10 pm: Fact Check An accountability show with major crowdsourcing elements to find the dissemblers and cheaters. The week’s most outrageous lies, gimme-a-break distortions and significant misstatements with no requirement whatsoever to make it come out equal between the two parties on any given day, week, month, season, year or era. CNN’s answer to Jon Stewart.

11 pm.: Liberty or death: World’s first news program from a libertarian perspective, with all the unpredictablity [sic] and mix-it-up moxie that libertarians at their best provide. Co-produced with Reason magazine.

All good ideas. But let me suggest a re-organization and a few other ideas.

First, shoot the messengers, i.e., the politicians. OK, not actually shoot them or, God forbid, put them in cross hairs. But minimize them. Healthcare, financial reform, immigration, energy realignment, economic recovery—they all are influenced heavily by what politicians do, but the pols don’t inform the debate. People with expert knowledge do. What do those who study healthcare think will decrease costs? How can those costs be impacted by public policy? How do we approach end-of-life care decisions? The people who can answer those questions don’t go to work at the Capitol. They are academicians, doctors, insurance executives, analysts and everyday people who have faced such issues. Three or four sitting around a table with a journalist who listens—rather than jumps in with his next question—can lead to intelligent debate. Sure, some folks will say that’s what PBS does and they don’t attract more than a couple of dozen viewers. But NPR has its largest audience ever. It’s not what I’m proposing but it’s a beacon of light for intelligent information.

Second, label nothing left or right, liberal or progressive, totalitarian or libertarian. Labels close minds. Once you read “the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities” or “the conservative American Enterprise Institute” readers and listeners have already made a judgment about the idea or viewpoint about to be expressed.

Third, don’t aim to make news; instead engender thought. This, of course, is ridiculous to many journalists. Their job is to report news. Fair enough. But I’m thinking of broadcast programs or long-form print journalism. The economics of the business is such that news organizations may need to change deadline driven news hounds into analysts, not of the politics but of issues. Think what would happen if a Congressman held a press conference and nobody came. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Fourth, interrupt talking point messengers. The journalists has no responsibility to let drivel drivel. The goal should not be to be “fair and balanced,” but “objective.” That means telling someone, “That’s not true.” Eventually, you may need to simply banish certain guests. Still, the politicians have a role in my programming, but they don’t own the airtime.

So here are my programs: Bob’s Show, Carol’s Show, Ted’s Show, Alice’s Show. In other words, put the focus on intelligent journalists who can foster insightful conversation. That would include the regular host, perhaps with subject specific reporters joining the conversations. The shows could tackle different topics each day. Hot issues, healthcare for the past year for example, might be a topic each night with each show’s moderator tackling a different aspect of the issue. Think “Charlie Rose.”

And here is where I think Rosen’s ideas fit in:

Begin each show with a fact check segment on the last 24 hours’ most audacious claims or charges (also see last three segments for fodder). The segment should pay particular attention to hypocrisy. Instead of “Fact Check,” call the segment “Truth or Consequences.”

Then the roundtable. Encourage participants to talk to each other. The moderator should interrupt for clarification or challenge, as well as follow a tangent when an answer requires it. Don’t book people who are likely to foment argument for argument’s sake but seek passionate viewpoints.

Then “Thunder on the Right,” with the moderator one-on-one with a conservative politician asking him or her to respond to the arguments just elucidated during the roundtable. Again, the questioner must be willing to say, “Stop the talking points,” or “That’s not true.” It’s OK here to discuss the politics of the issue, of course. Why can’t a good idea get done? How does our political system inhibit tackling big questions?

“Left-Brained” is the mirror image.

And finally, “Off the Wall” or “Out of Nowhere” or “A Third Way” (which is not to be confused with the middle way.) Seek out ideas not enjoying widespread discussion. Let it be a two to five minute presentation in any format that makes sense.

Each of the last three segments are grist for the next day’s “Truth or Consequences.”

“Politics is Broken” is not a recurring program but it is a recurring topic or issue. And by the way, it should have a dose of history, both to put the current political environment in perspective and to clarify what the Founding Fathers founded.

These shows may not fit into an hour-long format. Some topics may need 90 minutes. And CNN, with its broad resources for breaking news, can always preempt the regular line-up to cover such news.

My concern for Rosen’s program ideas is how long will people want to listen, for example, to a program that is solely dedicated to knocking down political myths. That may be too cynical for the most cynical among us.

Journalism was never meant to be fair and balanced between fact and fiction. It’s supposed to uncover truth. As the preamble to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists states:

…[P]ublic enlightenment is the
forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.

Black Journalists: Wanted! Needed?

Date: March 29, 2010

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: "Liberal Media", Newsroom Diversity, Politico, Washington Post

The Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander thinks the paper doesn’t have enough minority reporters. He makes a good case. But he buries the lead. In his blog post today, he narrows in on the key problem: Not talk, but story decisions.

Some minority staffers have told me they have considered leaving The Post because they feel that white assignment editors too often won’t embrace their story ideas. They believe the reason often is that the white editors simply don’t buy into the coverage idea because it’s on a topic that isn’t familiar to them or is uncomfortably outside their cultural environment.

Bobbi Bowman, a former Post reporter and editor who now is a diversity consultant to the American Society of News Editors (disclosure: I sit on its board), said it’s a problem in newsrooms. Frustration often builds among minority staffers “because they don’t think anyone listens to them” when they propose story ideas or new areas of coverage. In rejecting these ideas, she said, assigning editors often are saying to themselves: “This hasn’t happened to me, so it isn’t ‘news.’” The remedy, she said, is for editors to think outside their cultural comfort zone and be more willing to “accept other people’s definition of news.”

That becomes easier as newsroom diversity grows and minorities move into supervisory positions where they can shape news coverage. But in the current financial climate, when the Post is still struggling to return to annual profitability, expanding diversity is an extra challenge because staffing levels are being further trimmed.

All the more reason to expand newsroom conversation around the issue. Talk is cheap, but critically important.

Talk isn’t a bad idea. And in this way and at this level, it may not be cheap. But at the end of the chat, it takes a newspaper’s commitment to cover the stories of minorities, which will include stories about depravation, hopelessness and prejudice as well as inspiring ones about overcoming the challenges or the experiences of those who’ve inherited a leg up. In any case, a newspaper making that commitment must come first.

That’s hard to do in today’s news environment, especially if The Post sees itself as the newspaper of political record. You can’t have reporters investing time to find out what’s happening in minorities communities and explaining why it’s important, if you’re assigning “he said, she said” stories and covering or covering tea party rallies.

And what would that change in focus bring? Before anything else, charges of “liberal media!” Are the Post editors ready take the heat, or will they stick to stories of Clarence Thomas clones?

Not only is it safer to be the stenographer of the political elite arguments, it’s cheaper. Plopping a reporter in the White House briefing room or sending one to a Congressional press conference costs less that sending a reporter into a community to enterprise stories, for which even the minority reporter requires time to build trust among communities that don’t necessarily crave news coverage—and return with the best stories.

So before they count face colors in the newsroom, they’ll need to decide whether it will make a difference.

UPDATE: Seems like Politico is catching flak about the predominance of white men at the top.

Newspapers’ Problem: A 30-Something Nurse

Date: November 21, 2009

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Declining readership, Healthcare, Mainstream Media, Marcus Brauchli, Online Access, Pay for Content, Politico, Right-wing echo chamber, Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post

An open letter to The Washington Post:

I met the problem newspapers like The Washington Post face. She is a 30-ish admissions nurse at Inova Hospital.

I was sitting in her office clutching The Post and the Wall Street Journal, my hands gray with newsprint. She noticed and volunteered, “I stopped my subscription recently because the paper was all yesterday’s news.” She confirmed to me that she gets her news online.

The most obvious way to profit from readers like her is to give her information she can’t readily get elsewhere or charge for online content. Maybe you put it in newsprint before going online with it, if you think newsprint is your future.

I suggest you might save both your newsprint and online real estate for stories that readers like her care about. Dan Balz’s article about a “pep rally” is a case in point. I understand that The Post’s reputation has been built on its reporting of politics, but that’s no longer helpful for two reasons.

One, Politico, Huffington Post, blogs, etc. give us more and faster.

Two, politics has become so predictable and offensive. Writing an article that’s nothing more than dueling talking points probably holds little interest for most of your readers. Exactly how many of them care to hear the partisan tit-for-tat about what might happen a year from now? And even “Republicans acknowledge that events could change the political landscape before next November.” In March 2007, a year before Obama’s breakthrough victories in the primaries, who would have bet on his being president? Still, let’s assume such navel gazing matters to political insiders. Count them all. I’m sure there are thousands. Are there enough to save The Post?

Now consider Shear and Eggen’s story this morning. There is no news there except the coordinated effort by healthcare opponents to tie the recent mammogram study to “healthcare rationing.” And The Post dutifully obliged to help that effort with front page placement. The lede has no news hook: “opponents stepped up efforts to define the legislation as big-government ambition run amok that will interfere with intimate medical decisions and threaten the pocketbooks of average taxpayers.” Is that news? Increased taxes had never been mentioned before yesterday? “Stepped up efforts”? I was unaware opponents were holding their powder before yesterday. The story is “fair and balanced,” if that’s your criteria for good journalism. But is this story of any value to my admissions nurse? It certainly helped “radio show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News host Glenn Beck,” who again seem to act as The Post’s assignment editors.

I might argue with at least one point in the article: “Obama administration officials [say the] U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which issued the [mammogram] guidelines, has no power to affect coverage decisions by insurance companies.” In fact, insurance companies could use the results of the task force as a rationale to cut coverage for mammograms for women under 50.

But my complaint is not about any partisan slant or arguable point. Nor is it with any of these reporters. My problem is their talents are going to waste because of bad decisions about what content readers want. That ultimately rests with Mr. Brauchli. Maybe he needs a push from the national editors.

Maybe readers want more critical analysis of the big issues of our day, which I seem to get more of in Post columns than I do in daily stories. Or maybe it’s a curriculum change being considered by the local school board. I don’t know, but surely it isn’t what The Post has done for decades. That’s over. You’ve lost that war, at least for your newsprint edition. And I would argue that getting the story about the Republican governors’ conference on your web site faster isn’t the answer, either.

‘Negative Connotation’?

Date: October 15, 2009

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Ben Smith, Gay Rights, Jeff Flake, Politico

You got to love when people out-speak themselves. Seems Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, explaining why he spent a week on a deserted island, said, "I’ve felt like a pansy, I guess, and this made it feel like I was actually doing something again."

When I fist read about his adventure, I thought, OK, not my cup of tea, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Besides, I admired him for going there with virtually no food, though he did bring salt and pepper, which I thought at least showed a little refinement. (If he brought thyme, basil, oregano and capers, I would have really been impressed.) He caught fish to survive.

So then somebody raised an issue about his use of the word “pansy.” Was it Ben Smith of Politico? He had a piece on this headlined “Flake apologizes for ‘pansy’ remark.”

Why apologize?

"Pansy" can be used as a (somewhat dated) slur on gay men, and the comment raised some eyebrows for that reason. [Editor’s Note: Whose eyebrows? Smith’s?]

Flake’s spokesman, Matt Specht, emails that he didn’t mean it that way.

Well, I’m “outdated” enough to recall the use of the word to refer to gays. (Hell, I’m old enough to remember when gay meant having a good time.) But really, apologize? Well, Specht doesn’t just dig the hole deeper. He employs a backhoe.

"Congressman Flake didn’t realize that that word can have a negative connotation. He simply meant ‘wimpy.’ He apologizes if anyone took offense to it," Specht writes.

Flake, who one might say lived up to his name by his week-long stunt, wasn’t referring to gays when he employed the term. He was talking about himself not “actually doing something.” But he wasn’t referring to himself as gay – because that would be “negative”?!

Oy vey. (Oh, sorry, I apologize. I’ll have my spokesman email a statement that I didn’t mean to be anti-Semitic.)

Politico Buys Into Mischaracterization of Carter’s Remarks

Date: October 1, 2009

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Morphing News, Politico, President Carter

UPDATE: It seems odd to me that while most stories linger for a day or two on Politico’s home page, the one I allude to below, published at 5:07 p.m. yesterday is already off it, as of noon today, 10/2/09. My bet is that Jim VandeHei & Co. knew that this was a weak story all around: It not only furthered a false story, there was nothing in it that suggested “walked back” from anything.

I mentioned about a week ago that President Jimmy Carter’s remarks about racism were going to be translated by the media to be more condemning than they were. David Gregory asked President Obama about Carter’s comments this way:

Your election, to a lot of people, was supposed to mark America somehow moving beyond race. And yet, this week you had former President Jimmy Carter saying most, not just a little, but most of this Republican opposition against you is motivated by racism. Do you agree with that?

Of course, that’s not what Carter said, which was

An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.

I live in the South, and I have seen the South come a long way. And I have seen the rest of the country that shared the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African- Americans. That racism in connection still exists.

And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South, but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply.

I put more of the applicable quote up there to give it context. There is no way any credible, responsible journalist would equate “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American” with “most of this Republican opposition against you is motivated by racism.” But Gregory did and he helped advance the story that Carter thought GOP opposition to Obama’s policies is motivated by race.

Today, we have Politico buying into Gregory’s interpretation and saying that Carter’s more recent comments are a “walking back” from his earlier comment. The title of the short article is “Jimmy Carter walks back racism charge.” But nothing in the article indicates he “walked back” or in any way retreated from what he said. In fact, Carter said what I said: he was misinterpreted.

“By the way, that’s not what I said,” Carter interjected as he was being asked about the comment. “If you read the remarks carefully, you’ll see that’s not what I said.”

“I said those that had a personal attack on President Obama as a person, that was tinged with racism,” Carter explained. “But I recognize that people who disagree with him on health care or the environment, that the vast majority of those are not tinged by racism.”

“I meant exactly what I said,” he continued. “What I actually said, if you look at the transcript, is what I just repeated to you.”

Obviously Andy Barr didn’t bother to read the original comments.

Must Be the Other Guy

Date: September 27, 2009

Author: Bob Griendling

Categories: Cable News, Politico, President Obama

Anson Dorrance, the famed University of North Carolina women’s soccer coach, once said that there was a key difference between coaching men and women athletes. When you go into the locker room, he said, and chew out the men’s team for mistakes, every guy there looks around to those who he thinks were the culprits. It never occurs to him that he could be the problem. A woman internalizes the criticism and thinks the coach is specifically talking about her.

So it is with reporters, I thought, as I read Jonathan Martin’s story about Obama being a media critic. Martin assumes he’s talking only about cable news. That’s particularly ironic, given that Martin’s employer, Politico, focuses exclusively on the to and fro of political grenades.

The irony aside, I welcome another article about Obama doing just what many of us hoped he would: attack the media.

“It feels like WWF wrestling,” Obama explained to NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview. “You know, everybody’s got their role to play.”

The off-the-cuff characterization was in keeping with his newly emerging role, squeezed in between East Room ceremonies and pushing for health care reform: the commander in chief is becoming the nation’s media critic in chief.

While Martin spends much of the article pointing out examples of Obama’s frustration with cable news, one thing Martin is blind to: Many news outlets, including Politico, let cable gabfests drive their news agenda.