Andrea Mitchell questions ethics of the media
Newsbusters Mark Finkelstein relates an interview with Andrea Mitchel on Chris Matthew’s Hardball in which Mitchell says, in effect, the media on the Obama “whirlwind tour” (as I’ve heard it described about every half-hour since Friday) are Obama’s bobbleheads;
MITCHELL: Let me just say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in. You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they’re not interviews from a journalist. So, there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be. But we’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.
When Matthews inquired about the atmospherics of the trip, Mitchell made clear her frustration as a reporter.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you to access to the troops, Andrea. A lot of African-American faces over there, very happy, delighted faces. Is that a representation of the percentage of servicepeople who are African-American, or did they all choose to join someone they like, apparently? What’s the story?
MITCHELL: I can’t really say that. Being a reporter who was not present in any of those situations, I just cannot report on what was edited out, what was, you know, on the sidelines. That’s my issue. We don’t know what we are seeing.
Yeah, the first thing I noticed was the astounding number of Black troops in the photos and videos – and a serious lack of white faces. The military is scared that someone is going to accuse them of not being impartial and they comply with what the campaign tells them just to avoid the whining-ass clowns in the Obama campaign. The military invented dog-and-pony shows, they’re the best at it.
I read complaints from reporters earlier that Obama isn’t giving them the interviews they want, heck, they need. He gives short non-commital phrases like this one single phrase after his meeting with Maliki (I saved this from an AP story earlier that has since been scrubbed of complaints about Obama’s retiscence about giving substancial answers to questions – I know, I should have screen capped it);
As he departed from talks with Mr. Maliki and President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad’s heavily protected Green Zone, Mr. Obama said, “We had a very constructive discussion.”
That’s it. So in order to keep Obama from screwing up, they shut him up and restrict media access. So America gets an idiot for President and someone is pulling his strings.
Category: Media
