Patrick Healy's Over-The-Top Coverage Of Hillary Continues
February 12, 2007 -- 11:04 AM EST // // Post a Comment
This is pretty telling. Today's New York Times has an article contrasting the ways Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are addressing the Iraq war that says a great deal about Times reporter Patrick Healy's approach to covering Hillary. Healy, the lead writer of the piece, describes Hillary's approach as follows:
In these instances and similar moments in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton stuck to a set of talking points that she and her advisers hope will ultimately overcome the antiwar anger that is particularly strong among Democrats likely to vote in primaries. She took full responsibility for the vote, said she would not vote for military action in Iraq again, and then pivoted quickly to frame Iraq as President Bush’s war. This answer was usually met with applause.
In the same piece, meanwhile, he describes Obama's approach as follows:
In Iowa on Sunday, on his first trip there as a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama reminded voters that he had been against the war from the start and said he had offered a plan for winding down American involvement. His strong statements against the war in Iraq drew applause at each of four stops, from Waterloo to Ames.
Got that? When Hillary repeats a standard stump formulation, she's sticking "to a set of talking points." When Obama does the same thing, he's "reminded voters" of his positions. Let's be clear: The point here isn't that Hillary doesn't use talking points or that Obama does use them. Rather, the point is that all politicians are scripted and use talking points to some extent, and reporters make an editorial decision to describe some candidates and not others in such terms. In the case of Hillary, Healy makes the editorial decision to describe her as such constantly. He goes out of his way to paint Hillary as political and calculating so often that it's becoming suspect.
Just for the heck of it, I went back and looked at all the pieces Healy has written or co-wrote as lead writer about Hillary since she entered the race. Many of them go to gratuitous and even silly lengths to describe her as either choreographed, scripted or political -- to the point where it's obvious that there's a pattern at work. Examples after the jump.
In response, Mrs. Clinton repeated her standard talking points that she would never have cast it if she had had the intelligence information that she had now.
On Saturday, one week into her presidential campaign, the threat of a new, unflattering image surfaced: MSNBC used a microphone to capture Mrs. Clinton singing the national anthem in Des Moines...Clinton advisers found out about the YouTube video within minutes, and their campaign war room made a calculated decision: not to respond at all. They did not want to draw news media attention to the video; nor did they want to upstage their preferred news of the day, Mrs. Clinton's debut in Iowa.
[Editor's note: Is it possible to make a decision that isn't calculated in some sense? And what on earth was there to "respond" to? Charges that she isn't a good singer?]
From the same article:
Mrs. Clinton's campaign, for instance, has already shown that it is determined to use every new media tool to advance her carefully developed image as a centrist, and to re-introduce her to Americans as warmer, more relaxed and confident.
[Hillary] said she was rooting for the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl, recalling that she grew up in Illinois (a crucial electoral state and the home of Senator Barack Obama, a rival). She spoke lovingly about her daughter, Chelsea.[Editor's note: Can't Hillary even mention her upbringing without it being painted as entirely political? Maybe the suggestion here is that Hillary made sure as a child to be raised in Illinois because she knew it would serve her Presidential ambitions later?]
With a 4-year-old girl clutching her hand, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton began her newborn presidential campaign yesterday at a Manhattan health care clinic, announcing legislation that would significantly expand federal health insurance for Americans under age 18...The visit to Ryan/Chelsea-Clinton Community Health Center, which is just blocks west of Broadway (and is named after two neighborhoods it serves), was highly scripted political theater.
[Editor's note: Is it possible to stage a political event that isn't scripted? How would such a thing be accompished?]
Etc., etc. These are all clearly gratuitous. They don't contribute anything at all in the way of real insight or analysis. Rather, they're pure snark -- something that's snaking its way into more and more of the paper's political writing of late.
Again, the point is not that politicians don't have talking points or script events. Rather, it's that reporters and editors decide when and how often to make such observations, and decide which pols will be described in such terms and which won't. In the case of Healy and Hillary, it's clearly become almost reflexive at this point. It's just constant. Would it really be so hard to leave out the constant snide asides and just report what the woman said?
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