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.

Comments

[ol cranky]

It's rare but I'm going to disagree with you here. Joe Klein is not a reporter/journalist and is not acting as such. He is an OP/ED guy. While his expulsion shows the McCain-Palin brigade as being the same "head in the sand" types as the Bushies, you do have to differentiate between Klein's actual job and that of a reporter.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Point well taken, OC. But I'm skeptical of the distinction between op/ed writer and reporter. I think Matt Taibbi is one of the best campaign reporters in the US today, and he's an opinion writer.

I know Klein sees his role as being different from that of his colleagues who are more in the straight-up reportorial mode.

Klein's not the first person to get kicked off or "punished" on a campaign bus. It happens to ordinary reporters all the time. Like Amy Silverman who broke the story of Cindy McCain's drug abuse, she got banned from the Straight Talk Express a while back just for reporting.

The power dynamic is all wrong. The campaign has all the leverage because the reporters are working in its space, at its sufferance, bound by its rules. It's not just banning, it's all the little things they can do to play favorites.

[LauraJMixon]

Your analogy of embedding is an excellent one. The moral risks are very similar.

[Bernard SG]

I've read Maureen Dowd got banned by McCain's campaign plane as well.
We can also mention that McCain has boycotted CNN, sequestrated Sarah Palin to avoid contact with media... McCain's campaign has a serious problem with the fundamental right to inform and be informed.

[greensmile]

For months earlier in the year, our better analysts, say at Vanity Fair or The New Yorker, marveled at how "the press" adored McBush...how clear it is now just how the press honeymoon came about. Nobody got ON the bus unless they could pretend to be in the tank for McCain.

I hear Al-Qaeda is endorsing McBush. Think he will give them Klein's seat?

[Jason]

Obama just kicked off actual reporters of NY Post, Washington Times, and The Dallas Morning news simply because their papers supported McCain. What say you?

[KDS]

I agree that it was wrong for McCain to boot those critical of him. Obama has now done the same thing. Do you have the intellectual integrity to call Obama out for the same thing?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

As I said in my original post:

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.

I haven't read the details of the most recent allegations, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Obama campaign turfed reporters for being critical. They have a reputation for being extremely aggressive with the press both in terms of regulating access and pushing back against stories they don't like.

Basically, it's the fault of the media for buying into the "boys on the bus" anachronism. When campaigns were more freewheeling and informal, it might have been a worthwhile use of resources to put reporters on the bus. Now that 24/7 message discipline and 360 degree spin are the norm, it's a waste of time. Embedded coverage gives all the power to the campaign. The reporters are there at the campaign's sufferance.

Powerful media outlets need to negotiate better terms of access for their people. The old informal system has broken down.

[Alon Levy]

But least obstreperous embedded reporters aren't going to get unceremoniously dumped in a war zone.

They sometimes get threatened. Recall that Thomas Friedman talks about how all journalists in Beirut had to be careful to avoid pissing off the militias too much. At one point, he had to feed a fake story to the Rome bureau, not to be released except in Beirut, in order to placate one particularly hotheaded bunch.