Terence F. Smith

Eugene Robinson, arguably the best columnist writing in America today, posed a two-part question in his column this morning in The Washington Post:

“Are the news media being beastly to Hillary Clinton? Are political reporters and commentators… basically in the tank for Barack Obama?”

Gene’s answer: no and no.

My view: yes and yes.

The coverage of Hillary during this campaign has been across-the-board critical, especially since she began losing after New Hampshire. She may have brought much of the negative reporting on herself, sometimes with the help of her husband. Able and articulate as she is, Hillary can be as polarizing among the media as she is with the public.

And her campaign has taken the tough-love approach with the reporters who cover it, frequently ostracizing those they think are critical or hostile. That kind of aggressive press-relations strategy may sometimes be justified, but it rarely effective. Reporters are supposed to be objective and professional. But they are human. They resent the cold shoulder, even if they understand the campaign’s motivation.

The result is coverage that is viscerally harsh: her laugh is often described as a “cackle.” Her stump speech is dismissed as dry and tiresomely programmatic. She is accused of projecting a sense of entitlement, as though the presidency should be hers by default, that it is somehow now her turn to be president. When she makes changes in her campaign hierarchy, she is described as “desperate.”

Chris Matthews argues on MSNBC that Hillary “bugs a lot of guys, I mean, really bugs people — like maybe me on occasion.” Further, he has theorized that she has got as far as she has as a candidate only because of a sympathy vote, because “her husband messed around.”

Is that misogynistic? Perhaps. Is it unfair? Probably. Is it crude? Of course. Is Chris on to something? Maybe.

But whatever the case, Hillary and her supporters have reason to complain about the tone of their press notices, if not the substance. Of course, when a front-runner begins to stumble, the coverage is always more critical. And reporters are as subject to Clinton-fatigue as anyone else. But the attacks on Hillary have seemed over-the-top in recent weeks. A barely-suppressed glee often creeps into the commentary when Hillary loses another primary or caucus.

By contrast, has the coverage of Obama been overly sympathetic? Have reporters romanticized the junior Senator from Illinois? Have they glamorized him and his wife? Did they exaggerate the significance of Ted Kennedy’s endorsement? Have they given him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his meager experience?

Of course they have.

His rise to front-runner is described as meteoric, his speeches as mesmerizing, his crowds as enraptured, his charisma as boundless. Obama is characterized as the second-coming of JFK, etc. etc. It is all a bit much.

What is behind this enthusiasm? It is not so much personal preference or political bias. It is this: Reporters love a good story, and Obamamania is as good as they come. There has not been such drama and excitement in a presidential race in years. Reporters are suckers for a story that writes itself.

Last summer, the astute National Journal reporter Carl Cannon argued in an Aspen Institute panel that the media were missing the significance of Obama’s candidacy, failing to grasp the inherent newsworthiness of his rise from obscurity to the national scene. Carl was right then, but nobody is missing it now, and the result is coverage that is often just short of gushing.

In the end, the contrasting tone of the reporting in the Democratic race may not determine the outcome. But it will influence it. Bill Clinton is right when he angrily protests that “the political press has avowedly played a role in this election.”

In his frustration and fury, Clinton probably doesn’t understand the real motivation or comprehend what is behind the critical coverage of his wife and the fawning, sometimes cheerleading reporting of the Obama phenomenon.

But he is on to something.

So, what do the first caucuses and primaries tell us about the last glass ceiling in American Presidential politics?

Is it race, as some surmise after New Hampshire? Is it gender, as some concluded after Iowa? Is it both?

Or do the results demonstrate that neither is meaningful anymore?

Women outvoted men 57-43 per cent in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but with opposite results. In Iowa, they broke for Obama by 35-30 per cent, and arguably, gave him the victory. In New Hampshire, the state with the second highest percentage of women in its legislature (nearly 36 per cent,) they went strongly for Clinton by 46-29 per cent, more than enough to give her the margin.

Conclusion? Memo to the media: take nothing for granted.

Neither state of course, has a large bloc of African-American voters. We will have to wait for South Carolina and other states to see how the black vote actually breaks in a 2008 presidential primary. Again, media, take nothing for granted.

When it comes to voting, as in sports, the differences between men and women are more telling than between whites and blacks. Rightly or wrongly, men hold women to a different, more demanding standard when judging whether they are fit for the presidency.

Whether they admit it or not, men ask whether a woman candidate for the White House has the strength and emotional stability to face down a major international threat, or stand up to the demands of the job. They rarely ask such a question about a male candidate — if the issue arises with a man, he is toast, anyway.

Hence the fuss over Hillary’s emotional moment in the diner in New Hampshire, and in the Manchester debate, when she admitted to hurt feelings over the question of whether she makes the grade in “likability.” The primary results suggest that many women found those to be humanizing moments. Some men probably saw them as signs of emotional weakness.

It was a classic demonstration of the unique dilemma women face in running for national office. They have to be demonstrably tough, but not excessively so; visibly human, but not vulnerably so.

When it comes to race, the issues are more subtle. A quarter-century ago, Tom Bradley, then the mayor of Los Angeles, clearly was hurt in his gubernatorial loss to George Deukmajian by racial considerations.

Will the “Bradley factor” apply to Obama this year? There was little-to-no evidence of it in Iowa or New Hampshire. Remarkably, race did not seem to be an issue.

But, yet again, take nothing for granted. There are surely many American voters who, in the privacy of the booth, won’t pull a lever for an African-American, any African-American for president. Similarly, there are voters who will specifically support Obama because of his race, feeling that the moment is long overdue.

No doubt there are also voters, mostly men, but women, too, who flat-out won’t vote for a woman for president. And we already have seen that, at least in New Hampshire, women will come out in unusual numbers to support a female candidate.

What we don’t know at this point is, plus-and-minus, how many such voters there may be. They are not likely to level with pollsters about it.

But we are about to learn when they actually vote. Unlike any race before, this year’s presidential contest is going to demonstrate whether and which glass are ceilings still in place in American politics.

If the past truly is prologue, then you can find a detailed roadmap to a future Hillary Clinton administration, should there be one, in the pages of Sally Bedell Smith’s new book, “For Love of Politics.”
In 450 pages, Smith dissects the unique political and personal partnership of Bill and Hillary Clinton. “Two for the price of One,” was Bill’s half-joking campaign slogan in 1992, and that is indeed just what the country got for the next eight years.
Hillary was more than First Lady; she was first counselor in every important appointment and decision over the course of two terms. It was a co-presidency, in which Bill and Hill depended on each other in bad times as well as good.
At times, Smith writes, Hillary was out front, as in the health care debacle. At other times, she was the “hidden hand” behind her husband’s major initiatives. Staffers in the Clinton White House referred to her as “the supreme court,” who would have the final say on the most controversial matters.
Even during and after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill relied on Hillary for strength, guidance and redemption. Hillary could hardly have been surprised by her husband’s dalliance — he had been off the reservation repeatedly during their long marriage — but she was offended when he lied to her and furious at the embarrassment it caused their daughter, Chelsea.
Nonetheless, she not only forgave him, she strategized on his defense against impeachment proceedings and worked with him in the foreign policy arena to rebuild his reputation. Smith makes it clear that this had been Hillary’s M.O. for decades when it came to her husband’s philandering. Their joint political career and ambitions required nothing less.
So it is safe to assume that this partnership would continue to function under “Madam President” Clinton, if she prevails next November. Bill will be without formal portfolio — the nepotism law prohibits it — but he will be an essential player in every important decision. It will be a third Clinton term and, conceivably, a fourth.

The charming, historic town of Annapolis is quiet again, now that the President, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and the representatives of 40 other nations have had their one-day conference and headed back to Washington. Those of us who live nearby can drive downtown again and sailboats can cruise alongside the Naval Academy campus, all of which was off-limits while the world’s top diplomats were here.
So what was accomplished, other than hearing the President mangle the pronunciation of the names of his two new best friends, Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine? What remains after the photo op?
Quite a lot, actually. The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have committed themselves publicly and formally to begin sustained, face-to-face, bi-lateral negotiations of all the important issues that divide them. These include the final-status questions like the borders of a Palestinian state, the future of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements on the West Bank and whether exiled Palestinians have the right to return to their former homes or be compensated for them. The goal is a peace treaty within a year.
“The time has come” Ehud Olmert said repeatedly to address all these issues without pre-conditions or forbidden topics. “We Palestinians are ready,” said Mahmoud Abbas. The first talks are to be held in two weeks.
That is no small achievement, even if the outcome is far from certain. Certainly the world has waited long enough. It was 60 years ago this month that the partition of Palestine was adopted by the United Nations, 30 years ago when President Anwar Sadat made his journey to Jerusalem, 40 years ago this year that Israel occupied the West Bank.
The irony is that the talks should begin now, when Olmert is at a low ebb in the public opinion polls in Israel, Abbas controls only a part of Palestine and Bush is in his final year in office. Perhaps it was the very weakness of the three that propelled them to take big risks politically to try to restore their standing.
The choice of Annapolis as a conference venue was interesting. Of course it is handy to Washington and the Naval Academy is a secure site where the President could chopper in and out for his three-hour foray into high-stakes diplomacy.
But it has history going for it, too. In 1786, it was the site of the Annapolis Convention, where delegates from five states gathered to hammer out thorny trade and commerce issues. That led to the historic Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia the following year and wrote our national charter.
Big things can happen when people gather here.

I am scheduled to join Howard Kurtz on his weekly media criticism broadcast Reliable Sources at 10:30 EST tomorrow on CNN.
The crisis before us? Will NBC’s Brian Williams trash his reputation and journalism by anchoring Saturday Night Live later tonight? I suspect he will do neither. The public can easily distinguish between the Brian Williams who plays it straight on the Nightly News, and the Brian Williams who plays it for laughs on SNL Those who know him, recognize Williams as a genuinely funny guy with a marvelous, self-deprecatory sense of humor.
I, for one, will still respect him in the morning.

MURDOCH’S JOURNAL

Now that he’s got it, the time has come to take Rupert Murdoch at his word.

He has said that he intends to build up The Wall Street Journal, not dumb it down. He has said that he will strengthen the Washington bureau, not reduce it through layoffs and buyouts, as so many other publishers are doing. He says he wants more coverage of politics and government, more international news, more reporters on big stories, more inter-action between the paper and its website, more synergy with broadcast outlets, more imagination on page one.

Bring it on, Rupert. It is a great opportunity to prove your critics wrong. And frankly, The Journal could use all of the above. It is good today, but not great, not nearly as bright and original as it used to be.

And that editorial page? It is the most predictable, knee-jerk, reactionary opinion column in America. You may agree with its positions, Rupert, but even you have to admit that its view of the world is so distorted by idealogy that it rarely judges events or people on the merits. Shake it up, surprise us with new columnists with a range of views, re-design it to draw readers in, not drive them away.

You have talked about selling off Dow Jones’ smaller newspapers and some of its other assets. That is an owner’s privilege. But what will you do with the cash? You could use it to buy down debt and pay off the Bancroft Family’s expenses.

But if you take the money and plough it back into the product, if you seize the opportunity to challenge the New York Times in foreign and national coverage, if you enhance the website and make it free, if you demonstrate that a newspaper, yes a newspaper, can find new ways to make money, then you will have done the world a favor, as well as yourself.

Go ahead, Rupert, prove that you are not the hack your critics say you are.

You’ll enjoy the last, best laugh.

THE MEDIA AND THE WAR

The Aspen Institute has just wrapped up its third annual Ideas Festival, which gathers a couple of hundred people in the Colorado Mountains for panel discussions on everything from politics to poetry. On one panel, five journalists were 30 or 40 minutes into a discussion of media credibility or the lack thereof, when a questioner in the audience stopped the conversation cold.

Where, he asked, was the media during the run-up to the war in Iraq? Why didn’t news organizations demand better answers from the Bush Administration on the reasons for the war, such as Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Isn’t that your job?

The journalists on the panel squirmed for a minute and then one said: “Reporters thrive on conflict. The war was going to be a hell of a story.” A second panelist reluctantly, hesitatingly, agreed.

As the moderator, I was shocked. Were we really going to sit here in front of this audience and agree that the press had secretly welcomed the war as a way to sell newspapers and build ratings? That seemed a scandal to me.

And yet, I had to admit that at some point in the fall and early winter of 2002, as the military buildup in the Gulf continued and Congress voted to authorize the war, news organizations stopped asking whether the U.S. should attack Iraq and started to speculate on when, and how, and how as journalists they were going to cover it.

By Christmas, it was a foregone conclusion. The U.S. was going in. Among news organizations, the race was on to post people to the region and figure out how, technologically and editorially, they were going to cover it. Editors and producers stopped thinking about whether the war should happen, whether the Administration’s arguments made sense, and focused on what they would do about it.

Was it just groupthink? Were the media still stunned, like the rest of the country, by the aftermath of 9/11? Were news organizations reluctant to challenge a president who was standing tall in the polls? Worse yet, did they privately welcome the war as a great story?

These are awkward, uncomfortable questions, to say the least. But I have to admit that there is some truth in all of the explanations. It is certainly true that whatever the reason, the press, along with Congress, failed to nail the Administration down on why this war was necessary. I don’t really think journalists relished or welcomed the war, but they did accept it as inevitable, too easily and too soon.

So what if it happens again? What if this Administration or another begins to beat the drums for an assault on Iran, for example? You can already hear the rumblings in the think tanks of Washington. Will news organizations do a better job of demanding answers, questioning intelligence reports and challenging assumptions offered as justification? Will journalists ask the hard questions about the logic of such an attack and the aftermath?

I wonder. I know the political atmosphere has changed, given the ongoing agony of Iraq. I know the public and the Congress are more skeptical. But what about attitudes in America’s newsrooms? Have they changed?

I hope so. But I’m not so sure.

*

A purely statistical Project on Excellence in Journalism study on Iraq war coverage on the cable channels seems to have gotten under Bill O’Reilly’s prickly skin.

The study documented that Fox News allots about half the airtime to Iraq war coverage that CNN and MSNBC routinely give it.

Bill O’Reilly, who sees liberal conspiracies in nearly everything, immediately concluded that his competition was covering the carnage in Iraq to make the war look like a mess, which he conceded it is, and more importantly, to make President Bush look bad. Ranting on The O’Reilly Factor, he lumped both channels together as part of the “anti-war media.”

Howard Kurtz brought this up on Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN. I questioned how O’Reilly could divine the motives of CNN and MSNBC from their news judgement. Another panelist, Emily Rooney, argued that O’Reilly himself didn’t really believe what he was saying and was only saying it to be provocative.

This provoked O’Reilly further and last night he refought World War II with Howard Kurtz on The O’Reilly Factor in an effort to prove that his show was being patriotic by downplaying the “carnage without context” in Iraq. Unfortunately, he was making this lame case on the same day that a horrific suicide bomb blast outside a mosque in Baghdad had killed scores and illustrated that , despite the Surge in American troops and the latest offensive, the insurgents can still cause mayhem in the Iraqi capital.

If that isn’t news, Bill, I don’t know what is.

Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism made an interesting point on CNN’s Reliable Sources this morning in the midst of a discussion about the travails of CBS’ Evening News. A PEJ study of the network evening broadcasts shows that CBS, ABC and NBC offer roughly the same content and story selection these days. In other words, CBS’s response to Katie Couric’s lower-than-ever ratings has been to revert to a hard news format and dispense with the gimmicks.

Good move. We will see if it makes a difference over the coming months. CBS is in a street fight with ABC and NBC, and Katie will now get a chance to earn her $15 million on a level playing field.

A postscript: Rome Hartman, the former executive producer who had the unenviable task of tailoring CBS’ Evening News to Katie’s talents, now has a new job. The BBC recently hired Hartman, who CBS dumped in favor of Rick Kaplan, to head its new evening U.S. news broadcast, which Katy Kay will anchor out of Washington.

With Rome at the helm, and the BBC’s world-wide stable of talented correspondents, the new broadcast could have broad appeal to an American audience interested in international affairs. BBC America and public broadcasting stations around the country will carry the new broadcast. The BBC broadcast is not going to threaten the Big Three evening newses, but it could poach more than a few viewers from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

The network evening news broadcast may be a vanishing art form — its demise has been forecast for years — but in the meantime the three major broadcast network programs continue to draw more than 25 million viewers a night and generate lots of cash for their owners.

In recent weeks, we have seen another of the shifts in the ratings race that occur every few years: ABC’s Charlie Gibson is now in first place, with Brian Williams second on NBC, and as usual, CBS in the toilet in third place.

This recent realignment provoked new criticism of Katie Couric as the reason for CBS’s continuing souris. Her predecessor, Dan Rather, who in a radio interview this week accused CBS of “dumbing down and tarting up” the broadcast, became her latest critic. Les Moonves, the head of CBS, promptly attacked Dan for indulging in “sexist” comments about Katie.

The “dumbing down and tarting up” aphorism is actually one of Dan’s standbys. He used it in an interview I did with him on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in 2001. He was referring to the pressure from management to brighten the evening news — his evening news — format in another vain attempt to lure younger viewers to the broadcast. His “tarting” phrase was gender neutral, and still is.

Katie Couric is a fine, professional broadcaster. She demonstrated almost perfect pitch as anchor of the Today Show: serious in the substantive interviews, bright and funny in the lighter stuff. Making her the CBS evening news anchor may have been a mistake, a possible misuse of her talents, but the decision had a certain logic. Bring in a morning star, a proven performer, to the evening news and see if she could light a fire.

It is clear Katie has been unable to do that. She has been hobbled from the start by an overly-cute, even precious story selection and format that doubtlessly annoys many viewers. Those people who have 30 minutes to sit down in front of the tube at 6:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. want hard news in the 21 minutes they get between commercials, not frivolous entertainment. Instead, the management at CBS stressed the gimmicks, in a vain attempt to reinvent a wheel that doesn’t require reinvention.

So, bottom line: Katie is neither the problem with the CBS Evening News, nor the solution..
This topic, incidentally, will be the lead discussion on tomorrow’s Reliable Sources broadcast on CNN at 10 a.m. EDT, Sunday, June 17. I’ll kick it around with the host, Howard Kurtz, and guests Mark Jurkowitz and Emily Rooney. Should be fun.