In order to win approval from the media and financial elite, Democratic candidates are expected to move to the center and Sister Souljah the left-wing of their own party. By contrast, in order to win approval from media elites, Republicans apparently need simply reward their favorites. Consider John McCain:
[McCain is] very open to people. You can come on the bus, everything is great but if he knows or if his team knows that you have a hostile line of questioning or you have a long and well documented critique, they're not going to talk to you.
McCain senior aide Mark Salter quipped this morning that "only the good reporters" would get to sit in the specially-configured section for interviews. "You'll have to earn it," he said.
This is not how the McCain campaign does it. When a reporter calls in for a conference call, he or she is asked by an operator to provide his or her name and media outlet. Then when it comes time for questions, there is a long pause--long enough for someone in the campaign to select whom should be called on. This has caused several journalists who have participated in these calls to wonder: is the McCain campaign screening reporters, and, if so, on what basis? A reporter for a progressive media outlet says that he has tried at least half a dozen times to ask a question on a McCain conference call and has had never been selected.(...)
One campaign reporter says that after he published stores that were not to the liking of the McCain campaign, its press office threatened to cut him off. And several weeks ago, during a conference call, an operator came on the line and told me that I "was no longer needed" on the call.
Just like the Bush administration, by making reporters write nice things about it in order to get an interview, the McCain campaign actually seems to get good press. It is remarkable how well this strategy works. The end result is a media that does not question McCain, like Bush before him, with the same temerity as they would Democrats. Considering that there is plenty of evidence for it, one would think that more reporters would protest, and publicly claim that the McCain campaign is playing favorites among its lapdogs of choice. However, that never seems to happen. Maybe they are afraid of being accused of being part of the "liberal" media. That charge has kowtowed the press for decades.
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