Media Fairness and Hillary

Greg Sargent asks whether the media was unfair to Hillary, and goes on to list examples of an

extraordinary amount of frivolous, crude, unfair, misleading, outright dishonest, and transparently mendacious media coverage that without question had a major impact on this campaign. This should not have been tolerated by any liberals or Democrats, Obama supporters included.

Sargent admits at the end of this article that such a list could never tell us whether the media was unfair to Clinton “as a whole” or whether they were more unfair to her or Obama. And most of his examples come from pundits, who are there to express their (often frivolous) opinions, not to be fair to anyone.

So why call this article “Was the Media Unfair to Hillary?” Candidates have always been treated dishonestly, salaciously, and unfairly — that includes tabloid-esque coverage of the first presidental elections in U.S. history. That we ought to change the tone of our public discourse is unquestionable.

But Clinton has made the claim that she received extraordinary treatment from the media, and specifically that she was a victim of sexism — a claim that Sargent doesn’t address even though it’s the question du jour and seems initially to be the subject of this post.

Why this editorial lacuna? I think the primary point of Sargent’s post is to say that Obama supporters “tolerated” this unfairness and, by implication, sexism. Sargent cannot argue that Obama received less salacious coverage, because given Rev. Wright and Ayers and the rest, it’s a laughable task. But he wants to imply that Obama supporters were somehow involved in a nasty and defamatory campaign.

“Obama supporters” is just a rhetorical work-around, a stand in for Obama himself, since 16 or so million people are hardly unified in their reaction to Clinton coverage. And how would they go about demonstrating their lack of tolerance? For very active supporters, it would mean doing precisely the sorts of things they were doing on behalf of Obama — writing op-eds and blog posts and comments and letters to the editor, calling news organizations, and so on — on behalf of Clinton. That’s too grand an expectation — to be an activist on behalf of your opponent — during a hard-fought campaign.

As for Obama himself, he routinely stated, when asked about Clinton’s response to one smear or another, that he took her at her word. He never once personally brought up these controversies — from Bosinia to JFK — during a debate. Of course, we know that Clinton didn’t hesitate in this regard: Farrakhan, Ayers, “change you can xerox,” and the rest. So here we have a real standard of evidence: which candidate was willing to make public use of salacious media coverage in their own public statements?

We all know the answer to that question. And if you have a single piece of evidence to the contrary, please post it here.

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