The media condemns McCain for his Troops ad, while airing his Celebrity ad – Oops! They did it again!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The sound of crickets chirping is all you will hear in Arizona.  The local yokel news media, card-carrying members of "The John McCain Protection Society," have been deafeningly silent in their failure to condemn John McCain for using wounded troops as props to falsely attack Barack Obama with his swiftboat ad.  The local yokel news media are not going to hold McCain accountable for his dishonorable conduct (but they will run headlines like "new McCain ad mocks Barack Obama" – we love you, Johnny!)

At least the national news media has finally got around to calling out John McCain for being a liar.

Mrs. Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) of NBC News termed the ad "literally not true," and confidently summed up the ad as "inexplicable." Andrea Mitchell Leads Media Pushback On McCain Ad  On Wednesday, the Washington Post joined the fray with its fact-check report McCain Charge Against Obama Lacks Evidence – washingtonpost.com "For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true."  Karen Tumulty, writing for the Swampland blog at Time, writes that "the Washington Post is absolutely consistent with what I know, based on my reporting, about Obama’s canceled visit to Landstuhl. So how many more times are the McCain campaign and the Republicans going to repeat what is a thoroughly baseless charge?  And the New York Times editorial board weighed in with its opinion Editorial – Low-Road Express – Editorial – NYTimes.com.  McCain’s ad  is "a false account of what occurred — and Mr. McCain ignored Mr. Obama’s unheralded visit to a combat hospital in Baghdad."

The Obama campaign pushed back with its response to the McCain swiftboat smear:

The problem with all this is that the national news media was a complicit partner with the McCain campaign in airing his despicable swiftboat ad in the first instance.  No one ever remembers the retraction or correction to a story.  It is the initial breathless reporting of a story that stays in the minds of the public.  As reported by Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times With Commercial, McCain Gets Much More Than His Money’s Worth – NYTimes.com:

The number of times Senator John McCain’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.

The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.

Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.

This is why the news media should adopt a policy refusing to air or to report any attack ads that are designed expressly for their consumption for the media to do the dirty work of the candidate.  Of course, the news media will never do this, they are addicted to attack ads.  They want to actively participate in the campaign by shaping public opinion (they are supposed to be dispassionate objective reporters of the facts).  It never ceases to amaze me how easily used, and willingly so, is the news media.  They are either among the stupidest people on the planet, or whores willing to prostitute themselves for a candidate they support.  McCain doesn’t call the news media "his base" without reason.

This was on display again Wednesday. While finally criticizing McCain for his despicable "Troops" ad (after the horse had already left the barn), the news media couldn’t wait to rush to air McCain’s newest attack ad "Celebrity" (comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton) in almost the same breath.  How pathetic.  (Note to news media: John McCain has been trading on his "celebrity" status as a "war hero" his entire political career.  You may want to mention this fact in your reporting.)

The McCain campaign is using a tactic which is sometimes referred to as "green frog/red frog."  The campaign puts out an attack ad that the media airs ad nauseam before any critical analysis of the ad, and as soon as the critical analysis of the ad catches up to the reporting, the campaign will drop that ad in favor of a new attack ad that the short attention span news media will immediately begin airing ad nauseam before any critical analysis of the new ad.  This cycle will continue right through election day.  And as I said before, no one ever remembers the retraction or correction to a story.  It is the initial breathless reporting of a story that stays in the minds of the public.  The news media becomes the complicit partner of the campaign doing this in portraying a false narrative of their political opponent.

Of course, the news media will respond "We didn’t do anything wrong.  We’re just reporting the news."  Bullshit.

The news media owes a duty to the American public not to be used in this manner to aid the campaign of any one candidate.  The media knows that it is being used in this manner, and so far, has willingly been a complicit partner.  This has to end.  The news media is doing a great disservice to the American public, and is undermining our democratic electoral process.

As contemptible as the McCain campaign has been of late, it is the conduct of the news media which is far more contemptible. It is time for the news media to turn a critical spotlight on itself in self-analysis of its pathetic political coverage. You are failing miserably.