Sunday Watch 8-10-08: The Question Mark Over The Networks

(Originally published on CJR.org, the Web site of the Columbia Journalism Review.)

On Meet the Press Sunday, David Gregory told his political round table:

The big question ... on the campaign trail is readiness to lead, to handle a crisis like this [Russia-Georgia]. And the readiness issue has been a huge theme of the attack ads that Senator McCain has launched against Senator Obama. It's been something you've seen in, in all of the ads. Let's show clips from each of some recent ads to drive that point home. Watch.

Crowd: (In unison) Obama! Obama! Obama!

Narrator #3: (From political ad) Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family? He's the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead? Not ready to lead, that's the real Obama.

Gregory resumed:

There is a fundamental question, which is the question mark over Barack Obama's head to a lot of voters, is he really ready? Does he have enough experience to take on the issues?

David Gregory appears to have a limited supply of question marks at his disposal. He doesn't see any over John McCain's head. None about McCain's top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, who had been, until recently, a paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia. None about how Scheunemann lobbied McCain's staff on behalf of Georgia, while at work in McCain's presidential campaign. None about Scheunemann's job at Worldwide Strategic Energy making deals to help Georgia develop its hydrocarbon industry. None about Scheunemann's history as a principal backer of the Iraq war and promoter of Iraq's putative rescuer, Ahmad Chalabi. So many question marks, so many blind spots. No, to Gregory, the Russian-Georgian war provides one of those 3 A.M. moments when you wake up, rub your eyes, and see question marks circulating over the other guy's head.

Speaking of blind spots, Gregory went on to ask whether McCain's efforts to "define Barack Obama" -- "define" is political talk for "insult" -- risk "this maverick image," as if "the maverick image" were some sort of accepted fact, as if it hadn't already been exploded at book length by Matt Welch in McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, as if it were more important to speculate about the fate of an image than about its accuracy.

Meanwhile, over at CBS's Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer found nothing amusing about Karl Rove's suggestion -- yes, that Karl Rove- - that "part of the reason why Senator Obama is in the shape he is in today is because he's failed to run a positive campaign. He's run a negative campaign. He's claimed to be something new and different, and yet given these -- you know, it is really beyond the pale to sit there and insinuate that Senator McCain is somehow going to attack him for being black, which is what he did for over a month." Schieffer's penetrating response was: "What do you think John McCain ought to do?"

Later, Schieffer asked Rove: "Does he need to separate himself from your old boss, George Bush? Separate himself more?" To which Rove replied: "John McCain's not George Bush. He ran against him in 2000." Schieffer seemed not to know that McCain has voted with Bush 100 percent of the time in 2008 and 95 percent of the time in 2007. If he knew, would he care?

You know an anchor is out of his depth when he feels the need to defend himself from a withering attack by -- Paris Hilton. Yes, that Paris Hilton, who taped her own funny comeback ad last week and stuck it in John McCain's face. Schieffer, being a wrinkly white-haired guy, took major umbrage and seemed to feel it was incumbent upon him to stand up four-square for all wrinkly white-haired guys thusly:

I am compelled now to stand up for old white-haired dudes and point out we actually have several advantages over others. For example: If forced, we can drink coffee straight from a mug. We don't need to sip it through a little hole in a plastic top on a cardboard container to make it taste good. Since we grew up when telephones had cords and telephone booths had doors, we know how to keep phone conversations private. We were lucky enough to grow up when it was safe for kids to walk to school and we learned the lessons that came from having to organize our own after school games ...

The maundering Schieffer reminds me of the stuffy old sod on the train in Richard Lester's great Hard Day's Night who huffs to the Beatles, "I fought the war for your sort!"--to which Ringo says, "I bet you're sorry you won."

America, this is the man who will moderate one of your official presidential debates. Who could make this stuff up?

Comments

[wbramh]

It's time for a new News Network.
One that reestablishes the independence of its News reporting from corporate influence.
One that isn't ruled by entertainment companies or foreign investors.
One that reports and analyses the news rather than making it - or making it up.
One that practices the standards established by the Pyles, the Murrows and the Cronkites.
One that delivers the news in depth and never in sound bites.
One that lives by the credo "All the news that's fit to air."
One that speaks to and encourages a higher intellect rather than dumb down their listeners.
One that really is "fair and balanced" but has the moral fortitude to call out a blatant lie.
One that hires people for their brains and not for their appearance.
One that questions political candidates rather then act as their PR firm.
One that just gives us the news and drops the endless teasers and overblown production.
One that exemplifies the "better angels" of the American nature.
Had they not once existed, it would be nothing more than a dream.
We would all tune in, and stay tuned in.
So I ask... why not, again?

[trubluelefty]

I stopped watching Gregory on MSNBC... can't handle all those question marks. It is so obvious where he is coming from and the questions he leaves dangling.... Why repeat ONLY negative questions as well as give the Mc Cain campaign all of that ammunition constantly ...

[PuppaX]

Schieffer from above:

"Since we grew up when telephones had cords and telephone booths had doors, we know how to keep phone conversations private."

Added by me:

"And since we understand the dangers of people stealing your property, we understand that cell phones must be permanently attached to tables via long, curlicue cords."

[DasBoot]

Et tu, Bob?

I always thought history does not repeat itself. Surely, after eight years of George W. Bush, after the Iraq War and Katrina, the MSM would have learned their lesson and become more critical of right wing talking points.

Guess what, I was wrong. The same people who attacked Al Gore as "dishonest" and John Kerry as "stiff" are back and "question Barack Obama's experience" at every point. They just can't help it. It's pathetic.

[Jody2167]

No wonder people have stopped watching the talking heads and read Jason Linkins recap.

[IowaGirl]

Nobody could make it up. It's beyond satire. And we're educating generations of young people who don't have critical reasoning abilities and/or have been held hostage their whole lives by marketing-speak. So who knows if they even notice this stuff? Certainly the networks don't expect them to figure out the world from the crap they broadcast.

But it's still important to keep calling them on their crap. Gregory and Schieffer are among the worst stooges for the Republicans--right at the top of a very large pile, anyway. They are devoid of ethics and as you say, question-m­ark-challe­nged.