Entire Establishment Press Corps Death Spiral Watch
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Jim Rutenberg reports on how the entire establishment press corps is upset: they went into the tank for John McCain, and yet he doesn't like them anymore:
Old Friends in the Media See a New Side of McCain: When Republicans gathered at Madison Square Garden... four years ago, Senator John McCain gathered at a restaurant uptown with some of the biggest stars in journalism to celebrate his birthday... Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, Tim Russert.... Those there that night now feel as if they are living in some sort of alternate reality in the Xcel Energy Center here.... McCain’s aides have sent out news releases criticizing individual reporters.... They have canceled an interview with Larry King.... They have dismissed as “fiction” an article in The New York Times about the process of vetting Ms. Palin.... McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, has accused journalists here of pursuing a “mission to destroy” Ms. Palin with “a new level of viciousness.”... McCain’s campaign has made its anti-news-media message central to the convention program here....
Peggy Noonan... writing that Ms. Palin “could become a transformative political presence.”... But, seeming to undermine the campaign’s argument that questions about Ms. Palin stem from bias, Ms. Noonan was heard on a live microphone on MSNBC answering a question about Ms. Palin’s experience: “Most qualified?” she said. “No.” Using a barnyard epithet, she said Mr. McCain had chosen Ms. Palin more for her personal story.... A former McCain strategist, Mike Murphy, agreed, saying, “The greatest of McCain is no cynicism, and it is cynical.”... [T]he campaign’s attacks on the news media have been viewed by journalists and some strategists here as also serving tactical needs. Among them are to build a case that Ms. Palin is a victim of sexism, to change the subject, or, in the words of Leonard Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, “to put boundaries on the press’s pursuit of the Palin story.”
That Mr. McCain is behind these emphatic attacks has startled... those journalists who have known Mr. McCain longest. “Probably no one in American politics over the last 20 years has had a closer relationship with the national press than John McCain,” said Albert R. Hunt.... Mr. Schieffer, of CBS, said, “It’s just kind of odd.”
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
