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Local News & Opinion
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Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm Media Watching
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire 03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium High Crimes?
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid 03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda 03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks 03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity 03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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BAD MEDIA:Ayers = Keating?Media falsely balance Obama, McCain attacksThere is an unfortunate tendency among campaign reporters to suggest "both sides" are equally at fault in situations like this. In this case, the McCain campaign's accusation that Obama is friendly with a terrorist is considered somehow on par with Obama raising McCain's political record on a matter of actual relevance.
10/10/08—After the New York Times (10/4/08) devoted over 2,000 words to a front-page story assessing the "connection" between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground member William Ayers, it was no surprise that the John McCain/Sarah Palin campaign would seize the opportunity to try to re-inject the Ayers/Obama "link"--a popular topic among right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity--into the campaign.
In general, centrist pundits looked askance (e.g., NBC News Today show, 10/7/08) at the McCain camp's undisguised attempt to change the subject from the economy to Ayers (Washington Post, 10/4/08). But many in the media bent over backwards to suggest an equivalence between the Ayers exaggerations advanced by McCain/Palin and the Obama campaign's decision to remind voters of McCain's status as one of the Keating Five--five U.S. senators who received large campaign contributions from savings and loan executive Charles Keating, then later intervened in federal efforts to investigate what turned out to be Keating's criminal activities.
Why would the Times devote so much space to a non-story? The article offered one clue: "Their relationship has become a touchstone for opponents of Mr. Obama.... Conservative critics who accuse Mr. Obama of a stealth radical agenda have asserted that he has misleadingly minimized his relationship with Mr. Ayers." Unsurprisingly, the same day the Times story was published, Palin began citing it to inaccurately accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists" (NYTimes.com, 10/4/08) But many in the press decided that the campaigns were behaving equally poorly. "Campaigns Shift to Attack Mode on Eve of Debate," read a New York Times headline (10/7/08), with reporter Adam Nagourney noting that while both candidates had pledged to run honorable campaigns, McCain had decided to question "Obama's character, background and leadership," and that "Obama’s campaign signaled that it would respond in kind."
A USA Today editorial, headlined "Candidates Pursue Trivia While the Economy Burns" (10/7/08), lamented that the candidates were dredging up "associations and scandals so old that most voters don't even know what they're talking about without a historical playbook." The paper faulted McCain's invocation of Ayers, then trained its criticism on Obama: "The Obama campaign's retort? To reply in kind."
On the PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, Time magazine's Karen Tumulty (10/6/08) echoed some of the conventional pundit wisdom, wondering if Obama might "overplay this.... If Obama responds too much in kind, it's almost like both campaigns have over-learned the lessons of the Swift Boat Veterans from four years ago. But I think if he responds too much in kind, he really damages his own brand, particularly with the swing voters, these independent voters that he's very badly going to need on Election Day." It's hard to describe McCain's role in the savings-and-loan scandal as "peripheral"; as one of the Keating Five, he was a key player in the highest-profile political scandal connected to the financial disaster. Though a Senate investigation cleared McCain of serious wrongdoing (it did flag his "poor judgment"), McCain's ties to Keating were well-established: He had received over $100,000 from Keating, had traveled on his private jet and had vacationed in the Bahamas with him; McCain's family and Keating were also involved in a business venture together. Most importantly, as federal regulators were looking into Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan, McCain and four other senators held two meetings with those regulators, some of whom were left with the impression that the senators were on hand to influence their investigation in Keating's favor. As blogger Matthew Yglesias pointed out (10/10/08), "McCain was accused of actual Keating-related wrongdoing, whereas nobody has tried to allege that Obama was actually involved in any of Ayers’ bad acts." McCain has claimed for many years that the shame of the Keating scandal was what motivated his interest in campaign finance reform. But does that mean that the Keating history is off limits? Should reporters treat criticism of McCain's conduct in the scandal as a low blow, given that more recent stories have suggested that the senator is still doing favors for influential constituents, lobbyists and contributors (New York Times, "A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain," 4/22/08; Washington Post, "McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer," 5/9/08)? There is an unfortunate tendency among campaign reporters to suggest "both sides" are equally at fault in situations like this. In this case, the McCain campaign's accusation that Obama is friendly with a terrorist is considered somehow on par with Obama raising McCain's political record on a matter of actual relevance. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is a nonpartisan media watchdog organization. Visit http://fair.org for more information, or share your opinion about this story by writing to fair@fair.org. Republished in the Chronicle with permission from F.A.I.R.
Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on October 10, 2008. |
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