1.) For once, a non-media conservative defending journalists for doing the work they’re supposed to do.

Larison says (and you should really click here and read the whole thing):

When someone at a restaurant asked Palin a question about Pakistan that generated some controversy because it seemed to contradict McCain’s previous statement at the debate, the McCain campaign dubbed it “gotcha journalism” and right away when Gibson stumped Palin with his Bush Doctrine question there was a great hue and cry about the “gotcha” nature of this question.  Apparently the questions on her reading habits and Court rulings has also been defined as a “gotcha” question by Palin supporters, even though it is as certain as the sun rising that journalists will ask nominees their views on judicial philosophy and Court rulings … In other words, the “gotcha” is no longer an ambush — it can include any question to which the candidate really should have an answer. …

When this year’s rulings came down, the presidential nominees either volunteered their opinions on the rulings or they were asked about them.  McCain denounced Boumediene and endorsed Heller. Obama supported both, which caused him some trouble because he had said that he thought the D.C. gun ban was constitutional …  If Ifill asks these questions tonight, is she playing “gotcha” or trying to gain information and a window into the candidate’s reasoning and understanding of the relevant policies?  This might be worth sorting out in advance so that we’ll know which flubbed answers to ignore and which ones are important.  If all questions are now “gotcha,” maybe we can just skip watching the debate and go have a drink. [bolds mine-R]

2.) Speaking of Gwen Ifill…

This is the argument: The moderator of tonight’s debate, a woman who is known throughout Washington for being a fair interviewer (and far from tabloid-esque, as with the more partisan likes of MSNBC or Fox News), is writing a book about “politics in the age of Obama.” She is black.

This has been translated into “she’s a member of the liberal media and is writing a book about politics in the age of Obama.”

This is the intellectually dishonest bomb-throwing that otherwise engaged people like myself simply detest, no matter which side of the aisle is throwing it. First, a book about the changing fortunes of black politicians is a far cry from a book “about” Obama or (as some have called it) “PRO-Obama” — she hasn’t event written the chapter about Obama yet. Secondly, do we think Bob Woodward would be a bad moderator? He’s written books about politicians, and all of them have been tough, hard-nosed — and ultimately fair. (There’s a reason President Bush keeps sitting down with the man, even though his books on the Bush White House have provided plenty of embarrassment.)

This is how it stands: Those who begin whining about “unfairness” are usually doing it because they know they’re losing (see previous post on the landslide that now seems imminent)… when Sean Hannity et al brought the Jeremiah Wright story to the forefront, Obama never claimed the story wasn’t credible because it was being reported by a right-leaning news organization; the story was true and so the questions were justified. He tried to spin it, sure, but not by beating up on the press. I’m guessing that’s because he knew he was winning then, and he surely knows he’s winning now.

The average voter may not know that a recent John McCain ad, claiming Barack Obama sponsored legislation to teach sex education to kindergartners, is entirely false (even the cut-throat GOP operative Karl Rove said so). She may not know that Sarah Palin’s claims about her opposition to earmarks and the infamous Bridge to Nowhere are stretched truths, to say the least. The average voter may have heard Barack Obama’s promise to cut taxes to most middle-class people, and McCain’s own promise to cut taxes and his insistence that Obama’s claims are untrue — but it’s unlikely they know which (if either) holds more water.

The reason? “Objective balance.”

For years (maybe decades), it’s been widely held in journalistic circles that the proper way to approach a story is to get all sides of a story, and pay equal attention to all the sides. But there’s an obvious flaw in this approach: Namely, that the reader is given no indication of which side is more correct. That’s beginning to change, however, thanks to a bustling blogosphere/new media that has no such convictions. It must be taken with many grains of salt, sure, but as Fox Mulder would say, “The truth is out there”… somewhere.

Ex-Clinton campaign co-manager Paul Begala recently mocked this approach as the Neil Armstrong situation. (I’m paraphrasing from here on.)

Candidate A claims the moon is made of green cheese, while Candidate B claims it is made of rock. Most news channels would call it “Candidates Clash on the Moon!,” invite representatives from each campaign and let them yell at each other for a few minutes. 

Instead of just calling Neil Armstrong and asking him which one is right.

As I mentioned above, the McCain campaign ads this cycle have been SO false, and the campaign’s claims SO absurd, that even the “old guard” media is starting to play truth detector. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been particularly upset with a days-long debate over whether or not Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a “pig.” (I’d be shocked if you haven’t heard too much about this already, but if so, click here and here and here.) The way this thing has been covered, you’d think this is a really important factor in deciding our votes! Yet the issues of the day (Fannie Mae? Lehman Brothers? Going into Pakistan to find bin Laden?) have been ignored. 

This thread from a feature called “The Arena” on Politico was particularly apt. Various experts were asked the question, “Why does the press cover seemingly trivial matters like the ‘lipstick on a pig uproar’? (Or name your own trivial uproar.) Is the press complicit — or even the principal engine — in making politics so conflict-driven and superficial?” A particularly apt bit of discussion is below.

Steven G. Calabresi, Professor of law, Northwestern University:

This story was newsworthy because Obama had promised to lead us to a new post-partisan politics of hope and has instead resorted to partisan attacks.  What other promises will Obama break?

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of law, Stanford (responding to the above):

The press is trapped by the view that it can’t say what’s true if that would be seen to have an effect on an election. Think about the New York Times’ decision to withhold what it knew about the Bush Administration until after the 2004 election, for fear that if it had revealed that before the election, it would have been called “biased.” Somehow we need to elevate the idea that truth is a complete defense to the charge of bias. Armed with that complete defense, I suspect more would be willing to call the McCain campaign on this shameful misuse of what Obama said. Talk about a question of judgment: If a student of mine had read what Obama said in context, and then suggested he was really talking about Palin, I would seriously worry about whether we should arm that student with a law degree. But a law degree is a much less dangerous power than the Presidency. [bold mine-R]

And come on, Steve. A “post-partisan politics” can’t possibly mean you’re not allowed to criticize the policies of your opponent. It should instead mean you don’t make truth a function of which party it happens to benefit. That ideal should begin with us. The “interpretation” of Obama’s statement offered by the McCain campaign is absurd. If we can’t say that, then how can we expect anyone to be able to speak it?

For my part, I think the media is complicit: Not just because it pays too much attention to the sensational and not enough to the substantial (old media, including cable news, is losing ad revenue at an alarming rate, and it shouldn’t be surprising that these people air the stuff they think is exciting, which seems to bring in more viewers/readers), but also because it tries TOO HARD to be “objective,” when really it is only being “balanced.”

Balance, however, tells you nothing about the actual merits of something, unless you already know the underlying issues well. And it doesn’t take an avid viewer of Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” to know that, well, maybe a lot of us don’t know all that much.

I have been at a loss for weeks to explain the McCain campaign’s current strategy, which seems to be comprised of three steps: 1.) Say nothing of importance. 2.) Criticize your opponent for saying nothing of importance. 3.) Focus on your opponent’s positives, and try to turn them into negatives, instead of actually pointing to his REAL negatives or you candidate’s real positives.

That last one is a particular favorite of Camp McCain, though I still don’t see why. Check out this ad, and reflect briefly on your own impressions before reading further.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/oHXYsw_ZDXg&hl=en&fs=1]

After years of every foreign flag-burning being broadcast on cable news, isn’t it actually a bit nice to see a potential American president being greeted with fanfare? And since when is it bad to be popular? And in a culture that literally WORSHIPS celebrities (Britney and Paris, shown in the ad, among them), is it a good thing to suggest that your opponent is one, too? I suppose they’re aiming to make McCain look “real” and Obama look “fancy,” but I think they’d be better off sticking with their earlier (and more appropriate) tack — that for all his talk of Hope and Change, Obama is nothing more than a typical politician.

In fact, isn’t the allure of Obama that he’s NOT a typical politician, but something very other? If so, why point out his otherness? Then the old bit about gas prices, as if John McCain has been fighting for the average driver all his life (and not fighting for preservation of ANWAR, to the consternation of his fellow conservatives).

The longer McCain’s advisers let him ramble on about Obama’s lack of leadership without giving people a fluid, full-course explanation of how he’d make the country better — and standing in front of lime-green backdrops or cluttered grocery aisles or fly-infested interviews — the better for Obama.