October 21, 2008
Joe Klein gets kicked off McCain campaign plane
Joe Klein has been banned from the McCain and Palin planes. I agree with Matt Yglesias that TIME should pull all its reporters on general principle.
If a campaign proves itself willing to banish reporters for doing their jobs, the news value of all reports from the plan is compromised by implication. It's not necessarily a slur against the reporters themselves. They may be doing a perfectly fair and rigorous job, it's the circumstances in which they are forced to operate.
Sending reporters to travel with the campaign gives the campaign disproportionate power.
It's ironic that virtually everything the campaign does is with an eye to getting good media coverage, and yet the media are unwilling to use that power to change the rules of engagement.
All presidential campaigns play favorites with the press. The Obama campaign probably excluded Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker to register its disapproval with the magazine's notorious caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Why do reporters put up with this nonsense?
The reason is pretty obvious, when you think about it. Nothing is going to change unless news organizations put up a united front. Problem is, the big outlets that would have to drive the bargain like the system the way it is because it excludes most of their competition.
These papers and networks are prepared to accept the ridiculous strictures that campaigns insist upon because they are confident that they will get access at the expense of their competitors from smaller outlets.
The whole campaign bus/campaign plane model is an anachronism anyway.
Again, the status quo persists because it gives an overwhelming access advantage to the news outlets that can afford to send their people. A seat on a campaign bus costs $30,000 a month ($1000 per day) per reporter.
In an era of shrinking news budgets, it's impossible to justify that kind of expenditure for reporters who serve at the pleasure of the campaign.
Having reporters travel with the campaign reinforces the campaign's power to play favorites and punish reporters for unfavorable coverage.
From a journalistic perspective, the traveling press corps model has all the flaws of the embed program, plus more. Like embedded reporters the campaign press is at risk of over-identifying with the source through dependence and proximity. But least obstreperous embedded reporters aren't going to get unceremoniously dumped in a war zone