Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev.
Jeremiah Wright
By Jonathan
Strong - The Daily Caller | Published: 07/20/2010
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack
Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential
campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S.
government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his
closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s
rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at
an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George
Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so
long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –
to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do
you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a
listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists,
as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough
questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged.
“George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation,
is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The
Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential
campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps
to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news
organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post,
the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic
participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been
treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the
damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington
Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from
Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject.
Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote,
“Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to
rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my
opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this
idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about
defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media]
kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the
people.”
“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of
general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky
continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we
can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in
October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position,
calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well
as a political science professor, upped the ante from there.
In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the
power of this list to do something about the debate?”
Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing
disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had
posed to Obama.
“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning
against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he
exclaimed.
The members began collaborating on their open letter.
Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft,
saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far
enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and
[Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their
factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably
have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want
their input.
Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe
Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too.
The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on
vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.
In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly
Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into
the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that
day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.
Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did
Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the
website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at
Columbia University, helped too.
Journolist members signed the statement and released it
April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into
tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans
concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the
world.”
The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of
the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the
journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive
once again.
Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series
of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright
claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political
reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S.
federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing
genocide against African Americans.
It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose
to help Obama.
Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging
his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message
to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media”
who were members of the list.
The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright
at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts
of the right to maintain control of the country.”
Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing
Wright. “All this hand wringing about just
how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the
hustle going.”
“Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has
the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men,
women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive
me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of
outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news
reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a
neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we
should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t
think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m
saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various
platforms to discuss what about Wright we find
objectionable,” Hayes said.
(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell
on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should
cover this,’ but no one listened to me.”)
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t
disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the
propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending
the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica
were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no
fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically
irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula,
Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer
Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I
like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and
criminals.”
Ackerman went on:
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need
to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s
defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the
right of going after the left. In other words, find a
rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass
window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it
out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it
needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I
mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces
us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter
what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us.
Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who
cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such
a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites
the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes
*them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to
overreaction and self-destruction.
Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t
racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment —
Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.”
He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I
previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary
wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him
appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it
that so many on the right have such a problem with the first
viable prospective African-American president?”
Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but
only on strategic grounds.
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor
at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist
doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan
Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it
all about character. The goal is to get to the point where
you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda —
with this crap.”
(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he
thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question
I’m going to answer,” he said.)
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with
Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind
that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign
that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking
about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably
hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote
for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way
politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not
saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
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