Why aren't McCain's gaffes getting much coverage?

[Lugnuts]

Interested in this from a media analysis standpoint. Please remember most Americans do not get their news from Huffingtonpost.com.

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So he gets it wrong on the surge timeline (which CBS attempts to cover up)...

Seems not to know that Pakistan does NOT border Iraq ??

There was the Sunni/Shiite flub (twice).

"President Putin of Germany" -- who could forget that one?

Czechoslovakia

"Troops down to pre-surge levels" -- not true.

Packers/Steelers...

I had to search hard for stories on his two latest gaffes. Nothing on the front pages of CNN.com or even MSNBC.com.

What gives?

 

[Lugnuts]

And I forgot the mixing up of Sudan and Somalia. I'm getting as bad as he is.

 

[PeteyPirate]

Because the media are in love with Obama.

 

[Lugnuts]

Seriously, though. Hillary's Bosnia thing got huge play -- rightfully so. Can someone explain this?

Is it that the media is now afraid of being accused of being liberal?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

There are a couple reasons...

McCain is getting about 1/4 the coverage Obama is getting, so positives and negatives get overlooked.

Most of the stuff (the non-war stuff) is just "who gives a ****" type errors. Who gives a **** that he called the Czech Republic by its old name? If you do, you have too much time on your hands.

 

[PeteyPirate]

There are a couple reasons...

McCain is getting about 1/4 the coverage Obama is getting, so positives and negatives get overlooked.

Most of the stuff (the non-war stuff) is just "who gives a ****" type errors. Who gives a **** that he called the Czech Republic by its old name? If you do, you have too much time on your hands.

Yeah, I mean who cares that he mixed up Sunni and Shia? It's not like that could cause any kind of problem if he did it as president.

And who really knows that Iraq doesn't have a border with Pakistan? We're electing a president, not a geographer.

 

[ScribePharisee]

There's a simple answer. Because there's not anyone covering McCain.

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Media bias?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

There's a simple answer. Because there's not anyone covering McCain.

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Media bias?

No ****...

 

[Lugnuts]

No coverage can amount to good coverage.

Okay... half of those gaffes are just 'who gives a ****' slips of the tongue. Sure.

Steelers/Packers was just pandering, and everybody does that, so who cares.

Sunni/Shiite mixups are disturbing.

It's annoying to me he's messed up facts about the surge because he's pinned his whole strategy on that.

He's supposed to be the foreign policy guru.

And I'm genuinely disturbed/annoyed (and not cheering) because the reality is, this guy could very well become president. "Annoying" is the perfect word for how I feel. Annoyed with him and annoyed with the media.

 

[Lugnuts]

There's a simple answer. Because there's not anyone covering McCain.

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Media bias?

Yeah, kind of... because much of the Obama coverage was negative... and much of it was about him as regards Hillary Clinton.

 

[ScribePharisee]

That must be why I heard just now from a political PR person who says the media are simply intent on electing Obama.

 

[PeteyPirate]

That must be why I heard just now from a political PR person who says the media are simply intent on electing Obama.

The media, then, are not taking advantage of all of their options with regard to McCain's incorrect statements about foreign policy.

If I were the media, my multi-faceted approach would not only involve more coverage of Obama, but I would take out negative references to him. In my limited coverage of McCain, I would try to play up the fact that he has these senior moments.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

This is twice now that McCain has messed up really important facts about Iraq. I'm wondering just how much he really knows about the situation there, or is he simply using the old reflexive you stay until you win, because that's all it'll take? How much interest does he have in the details, other than the fact that we're at war and you don't give up? It seems like not much right now.

And his PR goon's attempt at covering up for the mistake was absurdly meandering and empty. And somewhat insulting, too, of the guys who made the Anbar-awakening work.

 

[Pastor]

There's a simple answer. Because there's not anyone covering McCain.

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Media bias?

No ****...

Yeah, actually, it is typical of this Yawn inducing poster. It is no surprise that he would go to a extremely right wing website to determine that McCain hasn’t received as many minutes (doesn’t say whether it was good or bad) as Obama.

Of course, this is the actual opening from that crappy blog:

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain took the opportunity presented by a foreign policy flare-up to showcase his Commander-in-Chief chops. All three networks led with the tightening of tensions between Iran and Israel, as Teheran test fired nine missiles including a Shahab 3 with 1200-mile range, which is far enough to bombard Tel Aviv. McCain followed up by granting interviews with all three network anchors, logging enough total time to qualify as Story of the Day. His key soundbite, invoking the Third Reich, would have satisfied Godwin's Law: "We cannot afford to have a second Holocaust."

Yup, that was McCain “showcasing his Commander-in-Chief” chops when he had no ****ing idea about the Anbar awakening.

Sorry, but that is just pathetic.

That must be why I heard just now from a political PR person who says the media are simply intent on electing Obama.

You mean when you just heard someone on Rush Limbaugh's show making the absurd claim.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

That must be why I heard just now from a political PR person who says the media are simply intent on electing Obama.

Absolutely they are. It's a much better story than someone who has been around as long as McCain has.

I understand it's the better story, but let's not pretend there is no bias here.

 

[Double Down]

You can joke about the angry "LIBERAL MEDIA!" cries, but this is a perfect example of how conservatives can dictate news coverage. News organizations don't want to be accused of bias, which people scream about constantly, and so legitimate issues that might make a conservative candidate look bad get downplayed and buried. Eric Alterman wrote an entire book about the phenomenon.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

The guy looks like he is undergoing a Reagan deterioration in front of our eyes.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

From the Chicago Tribune...

• Marking the anniversary of the March 1965 "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together "because of what happened in Selma." Obama was born in 1961.

• Obama told Larry King on CNN -- asked about that anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton YouTube ad, a doctored version of a spot created for Apple computers -- "We don't have the technical capacity to create something like that."

Obama did not know what he was talking about. Any professional media consultant can manipulate images on video. Turns out the creator -- unmasked last week as a political operative who worked for a firm overseeing the technical side of Obama's Web site -- made it at home on a Mac.

• Obama, asked if homosexuality was immoral, in the wake of comments by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace, sidestepped the question. After pressure from gay groups, Obama issued a statement stating he did not agree with Pace "that homosexuality is immoral."


Cynicism is like terrorism?
• One of Obama's stump lines is that the biggest obstacle he fights is not any of his rivals, it is cynicism. He used a variation of it during a reception he hosted at a conference here sponsored by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Displaying a tin ear, Obama said that one of the enemies is not "just terrorists" or "just Hezbollah" or "just Hamas" -- "it's also cynicism."
• The Tribune dug this up: Obama, in his memoir, Dreams of My Father, writes of a story in Life magazine that influenced him -- about a black man trying to bleach his skin white. No such article could be found in Life or Ebony.


Insider or outsider?
• Another Obama stump line -- he said it again Tuesday morning to the Communications Workers of America here -- is that "I've been long enough in Washington to know that Washington needs to change." He is running against Washington yet his campaign is populated with political professionals who are Washington insiders.

• Obama's embrace of some rhetoric used by rival John Edwards is getting attention. Edwards, in a 2003 speech made for his first presidential run said, "I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."

Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said in reaction to the Obama stumbles: "If there are people looking for a candidate running to be the darling of the Washington insider crowd, this campaign is not for them. We are encouraged by the growing, unflinching support of Americans who believe we can transform our country by changing our politics."

 

[Dickens Cider]

Usually, Mizzou, it's customary to provide a link if you steal something off the Interwebs.

Also, much of that stuff absolutely got press coverage, so what's your point?

Oh, I know. You don't have one. As usual.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Read the whole ABC blog:

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence" in Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said in January 2007. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

In Baghdad yesterday, after a day spent witnessing the reduction in violence in Iraq, Obama was asked by ABC News' Terry Moran if he was wrong..

"Here is what I will say," Obama said, "I think that, I did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."

If you had to do it over again, Moran asked, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

"No," Obama said. "These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with and one that I continue to disagree with is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader issues."