Category: The Media

Journalism: You’re Doing It Wrong

Glenn Greenwald drops ten tons of irony after dissecting an inane biographical interview of Attorney General Michael Mukasey by the Associated Press in a post called “The Associated Press fails to reveal Mukasey’s favorite color”:

This is why the Founders bestowed constitutional primacy to a free press. Just think about what the Government might be able to get away with — the kind of creepy propaganda they would be able to disseminate — without our ornery watchdogs serving as a vigilant check on the behavior of high political officials.

Heh, indeedy.

I remember growing up reading a magazine called Sports Illustrated for Kids. Like the name describes it, it was a reduced version of Sports Illustrated that featured a lot of how-to articles for different sports and questionnaire style interviews of popular athletes. I was able to learn what Wayne Gretzky’s favorite food was or what Jerry Rice felt the first time he caught a touchdown pass. While these were quite enjoyable to a ten year old child, I wouldn’t really consider Sports Illustrated for Kids a pinnacle of journalistic rigor.

The Associated Press interview of Mukasey by Lara Jakes Jordan strikes me as an inappropriate replication of Sports Illustrated for Kids journalism with one of America’s most controversial and infamous government officials.

Serious Nick Kristof’s Serious Column on Tibet

When last we saw New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, he was engaged in some serious wankery by asking his Chinese readers to submit comments to him about what they think about what’s going on in Tibet, but made no similar request for input from Tibetans. Yesterday the column based on input from readers ran in the Times. I’m just getting to it now because it’s been a busy few days for me, but I think it merits a thorough examination.

Kristof’s most salient point – and one most reminiscent of journalism free of personal prejudices – comes in the second paragraph. Kristof writes:

It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, and many ordinary Chinese think the government acted too wimpishly, showing far too much restraint toward “thugs” and “rioters.”

As I and others have been saying repeatedly, Chinese nationalism is a major factor in China’s response. There has been a real push from the Han Chinese population in mainland China for stronger responses and harsher rhetoric, something that the CCP has been all-too willing to oblige and foment in return. Unfortunately after this insight, Kristof engages in armchair punditry of the worst sort, by diminishing the hardships Tibetans suffer under and seeking to appease powerful Chinese interests, all in the name of Serious consideration of the matters at hand.

First is the Olympic wankery:

The best answer is: Postpone the decision until the last minute so as to extort every last ounce of good behavior possible out of the Chinese government — on Darfur as well as Tibet. But at the end of the day, if there have been no further abuses, President Bush should attend — for staying away would only inflame Chinese nationalism and make Beijing more obdurate.

Ah yes, we continue to do nothing in the hopes that by doing nothing, we will suddenly force China to do something. Which they haven’t. And then, when we concede we must do something, we should do nothing, because otherwise China will behave even worse. I’m not sure Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong practioners, or Han Chinese dissidents can survive such a Serious and Thoughtful prescription offered by Kristof.

No worries, Kristof has a way of making his Serious Plan even more Thoughtful:

If President Bush attends the ceremonies, however, he should balance that with a day trip to a Tibetan area. Such a visit would underscore American concern, even if the Chinese trot out fake monks to express fake contentment with fake freedom.

Yes, the mere act of forcing the Chinese to put on another Theresienstadt-esq dog and pony show would be a Very Serious way to show America’s concern. I can see the Chinese quaking in their boots at the thought of such a hard-hitting investigation lead by President Bush.

Moving on, Kristof offers this gem:

The Dalai Lama is the last, best hope for reaching an agreement that would resolve the dispute over Tibet forever.

Um, Nick. The Dalai Lama is also the first, best hope for reaching an agreement. See, the Dalai Lama was the leader of Tibet in 1949 when it was invaded by Mao’s army. He was the leader of Tibet for 10 years of Chinese occupation, during which time his representatives negotiated the infamous “17 Point Agreement” under duress (an agreement which, nonetheless, has never been honored by the PRC). In 1959, the Dalai Lama, seeing the Agreement not being followed and no hope for China to ever treat Tibet well, rejected it and went into exile. Since the 1970s the Dalai Lama has pursued autonomy over independence. China has never sat down to the negotiating table with him, despite repeated entreaties by the world community. Quite simply, the Dalai Lama has never been the obstacle to resolution – it has always been the Chinese government. And given that China’s strategy vis a vis Tibet is to wait until HHDL dies so they can push a puppet onto the Tibetan people, I don’t think China is concerned about the Dalai Lama being the “last, best hope.” Lastly, it is painfully offensive for Kristof to presume to know what the Tibetan people will seek in their leadership when the Dalai Lama dies. The Dalai Lama is the first hope for Tibetans to find freedom, but if he dies with that dream unfulfilled, I assure Mr. Kristof that it will survive in subsequent Tibetan leaders, be they secular or religious.

Kristof goes on to broker his own resolution to the Tibet question, something that I am fairly certain not a single Tibetan in exile or inside Tibet has ever asked him to do:

The outlines of an agreement would be simple. The Dalai Lama would return to Tibet as a spiritual leader, and Tibetans would be permitted to possess his picture and revere him, while he would unequivocally accept Chinese sovereignty. Monasteries would have much greater religious freedom, and Han Chinese migration to Tibet would be limited. The Dalai Lama would also accept that the Tibetan region encompasses only what is now labeled Tibet on the maps, not the much larger region of historic Tibet that he has continued to claim.

Boy, that is simple. Tibetans get spiritual autonomy in exchange for a massive reduction in the size of their country and no future for independence in their land. That is, in exchange for the basic human right of religious freedom, Kristof contends Tibetans must give up their human right of self-determination while still accepting some form of Chinese settlement in Tibet. For Kristof, the benefits are all on China’s side:

With such an arrangement, China could resolve the problem of Tibet, improve its international image, reassure Taiwan and rectify a 50-year-old policy of repression that has catastrophically failed.

Honestly Nick, go fuck yourself. This is a question of basic human freedoms and human rights. China’s national image has nothing – nothing – to do with human rights. There is no internationally recognized right to save face or to be well regarded by other countries. There are, on the other hand, international treaties recognizing a peoples right to free speech, free religion, and self-determination. There are also international laws prohibiting one country from invading another and occupying it, while committing genocide on the local population. But we can forget all of that if we can just find a way to trade an improved international image for China with one basic right for Tibetans. If anything is clear over the last 50 years, it’s that Tibetans are not a people whose aspirations can be reduced to their faith. Tibetans want freedom, plain and simple. The implication that the only thing they care about is getting to pray before a picture of the Dalai Lama is nothing more than a racist infantilization.

Kristof’s tour of anti-Tibetan wankery takes a turn towards libel further on in the column:

After the Dalai Lama dies, there will be no one to hold Tibetans back, and more militant organizers in the Tibetan Youth Congress and other organizations will turn to violence, and perhaps terrorism.

The Tibetan Youth Congress is not a “militant organiz[ation]”. There is no evidence that Kristof can point to support his claim. Likewise there is no evidence that TYC or any other Tibetan organization would turn to “terrorism.” Tibetans have been, in all likelihood, the most consistently nonviolent independence movement in modern history. The casual suggestion that a major Tibetan support group operating in exile is a militant organization is quite simply beyond the pale. TYC is an organization that supports Tibetan independence and their activists are in many ways the backbone of the globe independence movement. But “militant”? Please. TYC’s militancy extends primarily to their commitment to nonviolence as a means of gaining independence. They have used hunger strikes on a number of occasions to raise awareness of Tibet, but how could this possibly make them “militant”? Kristof is talking out of his ass and he’s libeling a respectable organization in so doing.

Kristof ends his column with two paragraphs that again reveal his inability to address the Tibet situation in a moral or thoughtful way:

The only other Tibetan who could fill that vacuum is the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 Tibetan leader, who turns 19 later this month. But the Chinese government kidnapped the Panchen Lama when he was 6 years old and apparently has kept him under house arrest ever since.

Americans sometimes think that the Tibetan resentments are just about political and religious freedom. They’re much more complicated than that. Tibetan anger is also fueled by the success of Han Chinese shop owners, who are often better educated and more entrepreneurial. So Tibetans seek solace in monasteries or bars, and the economic gap widens and provokes even more frustration — which the spotlight of the Olympics gives them a chance to express.

Kristof has just described a number of monumental transgressions by China against Tibet. The kidnapping of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the six year old Panchen Lama, is glossed over. The Panchen Lama was, until recently, the world’s youngest political prisoner. No one has ever seen or heard from him since he was kidnapped, yet Kristof makes no moral judgment about this gross offense to the rule of law and the most basic standards of human behavior by the Chinese government. In fact, kidnapped cannot be the right word. China disappeared the Panchen Lama.

Kristof follows that with an amplification of the problems Tibetans in Tibet face at the hands of China’s occupation. The economic situation for Tibetans is disastrous, though it’s not as balanced in its genesis as Kristof depicts it. Chinese policies limit the amount of education Tibetans can receive. Chinese settlers are given preference in all facets of economic life over Tibetans. Tibet is commodified as a tourist attraction for Chinese tourists, and then Tibetans are shut out of profiting from this industry, other than through bars, night clubs, and brothels. Kristof again writes of this tragedy, but refuses to make a moral assessment of what China and the Chinese occupation is doing to Tibetans. He can only give Tibetans credit for recognizing the world will pay attention to them now because of the Olympics. Quite simply, Kristof is morally corrupt when it comes to Tibet and China. I would hope his editors at the Times prohibit Kristof from writing any more columns on Tibet until he develops a moral compass that is capable of telling him that it is acceptable to outraged at cultural, economic, and physical genocide. And the disappearing of six year old children is objectionable, too, yet Kristof is incapable of casting aspersions on Beijing when it comes to their atrocities in Tibet.

It’s remarkable to me that Kristof can be such a passionate, ardent advocate on behalf of Darfur and yet engage in such equivocation and apologism for China when it comes to Tibet. What makes Kristof’s advocacy for Darfur admirable is what makes his dismissiveness towards Tibet so infuriating: he is a true Sinophile, he is married to a Chinese woman, and he frequently writes from China. This hasn’t corrupted his moral compass when it comes to Darfur, but as soon as he touches Tibet, he seems to forget that there are universal standards for human behavior and morality. Kristof embraces the worst tendencies of opinion writers seeking Serious solutions to problems that are both patently offensive on their face and done in bad faith in the absence of morality.

I don’t know what Nick Kristof’s goals were for writing this column. In the traditional opinion journalist way, he presented a Very Serious discussion of Tibet that succeeded in preaching inaction, proposing a solution to the Tibet question predicated on an infantilized version of Tibetans and Tibetans conceding basic human rights, libeled a major nonviolent Tibetan support group, and failed to pass moral judgment on China’s disappearance of a six year old child. This piece does nothing to stop China’s crackdown in Tibet. It exists as a monument to the mindset promoted by Kristof (and in recent years by his colleague Tom Friedman vis a vis Iraq) that by thinking hard and wishing hard, but doing nothing and taking no responsibility for their words, opinion journalists can sleep well knowing they are Deeply Serious People who confront Hard issues without fear. Sadly, this mindset will go down in the annals of history as one that lead to more war, more violence, more suffering, and a propensity for inaction by those with the power to do something in the face of moral imperatives that has marked the early 21st century.

Silent Killers

Humorous Pictures

Athenae has a recap of some of her presentation at EschaCon on the media and how the dynamics of a failing business model, laziness, stupidity, and sensationalism are all contributing to the decline of journalism in America.

My remarks at the panel on journalism can basically be boiled down to “never ascribe to bias what laziness and stupidity will adequately explain.” What I meant by laziness and stupidity is the tendency, all across the board, to embrace the easy narrative.

The easy narrative in the form of cheap sentimentality, as in stories about how to explain school shootings to your children, or stories about how 9/11 made you love your family and go back to church.

The easy narrative in the form of exploitation of fear. Matt and I spent some time talking about all the various things which were called “the silent killer” by newscasts, but it’s the false sense of urgency, and it’s a very short step from “YOUR MASCARA COULD KILL YOU” to “TERRORISTS COULD KILL YOU” and getting people caught up in the outrage of the moment such that everything is always at a fever pitch, making you ripe for whoever can best pretend to solve the crisis you’re not really facing.

While working on the Dodd campaign, the internet team pretty much always had either MSNBC or CNN on in the background – from the time we got into the office, until the time we went home at night, the news was on. Doing that day in and day out for an extended period of time, you’ll really be surprised to find out how many things cable news outlets will label as silent killers. I mean, it’s actually pretty hard to parody (though the LOL cat above does it well) because it’s so absurd. I recall one week this fall where, within a matter of days of each other, separate reports came out on the same network about the hidden killers heat and cold.

I think Athenae is spot-on to connect the cheapening of fear through stories conveying urgent danger from mundane things to the use of fear of terrorists living in caves in the mountains of Afghanistand and Pakistan. If your mascara can kill you, you better be scared shitless of some guy with a different sounding name and different looking clothes who carries with him the most ubiquitous rifle in the world. Right? Except, somewhere along the way, a lot of Americans stopped being scared of the GOP’s and the complicit media’s drum beat of fear of terror attacks. The Bush administration has certainly played it’s “Boy Who Cried Wolf” trick enough times that I don’t know many people who take it too seriously when a Bush administration official sounds the klaxon on behalf of, say, getting telecom immunity passed or facilitating a hasty war with Iran.

I wonder if the same goes for people watching the news. When I see reports about how mascara or soccer goals or the common cold can kill Americans, I usually laugh. Most people I’m watching with usually do the same. We question how these reporters can take themselves seriously, as we surely cannot. I don’t doubt that there is a segment of hyper-frightened parents and germaphobes that views these reports and embraces the fear contained within, but I certainly hope we’re a more courageous nation than this sort of reporting suggests. I think Athenae is right, though: while this sort of reporting is a product of lazy and stupid reporting, there is still great journalism out there and there will be more great journalism if more readers demand it of their reporters.

Obey the NYT

Today’s New York Times has a piece about how young voters are getting news online, sharing it socially, and avoiding traditional outlets like the six o’clock news in favor of internet outlets for similar information. The Times ties metrics speaking to the voracious consumption of news online by young people to the massive rise of turnout by youth voters in the presidential primary campaign. In short, it’s an article that should serve as a combined validation for the work internet technologists on political campaigns and people like Mike Connery, Jane Fleming Kleeb, Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, and Fred Gooltz who have all been evangelicals when it comes to the rise of youth vote.

It’s great to see the media finally recognize that young people care about politics and are finding new ways to learn and share information about politics online – and then taking that information and voting on it. That said, I wonder what the reasoning for having the art for this article included a photo of youths at an Obama rally holding a poster designed by Shephard Fairey. It’s a nice picture and all, but while the article uses a couple Obama references for how youth enthusiasm is manifesting itself in the presidential campaign, the article isn’t about Obama’s support from young voters.

Anti-Cassandra

Paul Krugman, responding in part to Glenn Greenwald’s post today, writes:

Reading some of today’s news, it suddenly struck me: we’re living in the age of the anti-Cassandra.

Cassandra had the gift of prophecy — she saw, correctly, what was coming — but was under a curse: nobody would believe her.

Today, our public discourse is dominated by people who have been wrong about everything — but are still, mysteriously, treated as men of wisdom, whose judgments should be believed. Those who were actually right about the major issues of the day can’t get a word in edgewise.

What set me off was the matter of Alan Greenspan; as Dean Baker like to remind us, news analyses of the housing and financial crisis almost always draw exclusively on “experts” who first insisted that there wasn’t a housing bubble, then insisted that the financial consequences of the bubble’s bursting would remain “contained.”

It’s even worse, of course, on the matter of Iraq: just about every one of the panels convened to discuss the lessons of five disastrous years consisted solely of men and women who cheered the idiocy on.

Yep, this pretty much says it all.  I think this a great description of a horrendous problem on Krugman’s part. It’s a somewhat more PG version of the Dirty Fucking Hippy narrative bloggers have used over the last six years and is something that is worth pushing into discourse.  I hope Krugman considers devoting a full column to this subject; as the preeminent liberal political opinion writer in America, his platform can get this sort of meme noticed. The only way we can get this dynamic to change is by identifying it and forcing others to do the same.

An Observation

I’ve been in Europe for five days. In that time I’ve watched a fair bit of news on the BBC and broadcasts of CNN Europe and CNN Asia. While these TV news outlets are all covering the US presidential election on an almost hourly basis, I haven’t once seen these media outlets devolve into coverage of the daily he said-she said, gotcha exercise of false equivalencies. Instead, the English language European media outlets are covering substantive issues about how we will pick our President.

I’m not really keeping up on my blog reading, so I’m effectively cut out of the petty presidential politics that have become so tiresome over the last six to eight weeks. All in all, this style of ignoring the daily pie fights between campaigns strikes me as a much better way for the media to comport towards these elections.

Off the Record

The Scotsman:

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

“Interestingly, the people in her innermost circle seem to not mind her; I think they really love her.”

But she added: “There is this middle circle – they are really on the warpath. But the truth is she has proved herself really willing to stoop.”

I don’t see why a journalist has an obligation to grant a source the ability to go off the record after the source has said something they don’t want to see in print. Journalists and sources have to negotiate things ahead of time and they should seek to reach agreement on how a conversation progresses. Attribution is often something that is negotiated during the course of an interview as well – as Power did here. But I don’t see an obligation that ex post facto requests be honored. Power messed up and a journalist decided not to do her a favor by letting her sweep the comment off the record.

What’s clear from the following two paragraphs is that Power was talking specifically about Hillary Clinton and how the Clinton campaign is operating. This interview clearly covered ground where Power was taking shots at Clinton. One of them went too far in what Power, an important Obama surrogate on foreign policy issues, should have been discussing with a journalist.

Lastly, it doesn’t really bother me that an Obama surrogate and advisor thinks ill of Clinton. In my experience, it’s entirely common for campaign staffers to develop very powerful, passionate opinions about their opponents. There have been plenty of reports of Obama and Clinton staffers, in private, holding very negative opinions of the others. I know that I had my moments on the Dodd campaign where I ripped other members of the Democratic field with  negative descriptions and the use of hyperbole. But I did this behind closed doors, not in an interview with a reporter. Obviously Power immediately recognized her mistake and tried to get it corrected with the help of the journalist. As I said in the beginning, though, I don’t think the journalist had any obligation to grant Power retroactive off the record status.

We Are the Progressive Pushback We’ve Been Waiting For

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has a great piece about how progressive blogs, lead by FireDogLake, orchestrated a massive push back on an Associated Press story by Nedra Pickler of Republican smear attacks on Barack Obama.

What prompted the organized outpouring of angst last week against the AP was when the website Firedoglake took action, embraced a new organizing tool, tapped into a wellspring of enthusiasm for Obama, and pointed angry readers not in the direction of the AP itself, but toward their local newspaper clients. Why? Because newspapers are more responsive to complaints filed by nearby readers, and because the newspapers pay the AP’s bills as newswire customers.

The riddle, though, was how to help readers contact hundreds of individual newspapers nationwide. “It’s like trying to wrestle an octopus,” says Jane Hamsher, founder of FDL. The solution centered on customizing a software tool that allowed online activists to effortlessly contact their local daily. The tool FDL modified was created by the online communications firm Blue State Digital. Readers simply entered their ZIP code into an on-screen box. The next screen displayed the local newspaper (or newspapers) in their region to be contacted and asked readers to enter their name and other personal information to be sent to the newspaper. The screen provided readers with pre-approved text (i.e., “I hope that in the future we can expect reporting that focuses on the candidate’s positions rather than trying to call into question how much they love the country they tirelessly serve.”)

If they wanted to, though, readers could personalize, or create, the letter themselves. Approximately half the letter writers in the FDL campaign wrote their own text. With the third click, the reader’s letter was sent to the newspaper.

FDL’s call to action was posted February 25 and was quickly trumpeted by fellow bloggers, who urged their readers to participate.

The results, according to FDL, as of March 3: 14,252, letters sent to 649 different newspapers located in all 50 states, and from 1,735 ZIP codes. That included more than 1,500 letters to The New York Times, 1,400 to both USA Today and The Washington Post — not to mention 52 to The Denver Post and 21 to the Florida Times-Union.

Why the overwhelming reaction from a single newspaper article? “It was such a clear example of something getting picked up from the right-wing attack machine and laundered into the mainstream press,” Hamsher told me, referring to the Pickler article. “It was the perfect storm because it was right at the time when we were ready to roll out the [organizing] tool. She just picked the wrong day to write that story. And the wrong target, because there is all this enthusiasm for Obama, and people wanting to get involved.”

It was the fervent Obama supporters from the diary section at the top-rated liberal website DailyKos who really made the project a success, says Hamsher. Tapping into the energy of the Obama fan base was a key goal of the letter-writing campaign. “All of a sudden you have all of this passion from people who are new to the political process. If we can put them to work and help educate them about the nature of the right-wing attack machine and use their energy, and channel it into tools, we can really make life difficult” for journalists who fail to maintain accepted standards, says Hamsher. “This is what actually got me into blogging; the potential to find a way to pull this kind of thing off.”

As a progressive movementarian who sees internet politics as the most promising avenue for renewing civic engagement for bettering America, I see this as a great sign of things to come. This is how the netroots – and hopefully soon more people who might not identify directly with the online progressive base – can stop bad media narratives, shoddy reporting, and smear attacks from the right on Democratic candidates, from President on down.

We all know that we will see many, many, many more pieces like Pickler’s whether our nominee is Obama or Clinton. The subject doesn’t matter, we know the attacks and the shoddy journalism will come. But if we have the ability to marshal tens of thousands of emails in response to bad reporting and target them directly at the outlets that run them, we can make editors at papers around the country think twice about taking conservative attack memes and portray them as news worthy of gracing anything other than the Letters to the Editor section.

It’s not as if Democratic campaigns don’t try to kill bad stories when they come out. I have no doubt that Obama’s press staff was simultaneously pushing back on Pickler and her editors. But that’s their job and these reporters and editors have working relationships with campaign press flacks. Democratic communications operatives have been working against hostile press reports for years and, generally speaking, a Democrat telling a reporter that their Republican attack narrative sucks and needs to be changed doesn’t shake the world, let alone the way the reporter and her editors will think about how they write their next piece.

But 15,000 letters to the editor of hundreds of media outlets is a different story. It’s a story that must be replicated as often as necessary throughout this campaign, because you will never change how reporters think based on one story alone. We need to be prepared to push back on the press whenever necessary, and Jane Hamsher and FireDogLake have provided us with the means and the model to do just that.

ArchPundit on Russert, Farrakhan

ArchPundit:

Timmeh took his cue from Richard Cohen in the Washington Post column:

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama’s spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said “truly epitomized greatness.” That man is Louis Farrakhan.

Except, Timmeh, got the facts wrong on top of it.  Wright didn’t say Farrakhan epitomized greatness, that was a part of the Trumpet Magazine award to Farrakhan.  Wright is the CEO of the magazine, but his daughter Jeri is the publisher.  While those ties might be relevant, it’s very different from Jeremiah Wright saying that.  And, in fact, the magazine split off from the congregation in September of 2005.

The thing is, everyone is missing the point about how fucking stupid this line of questioning was. When was the last time Timmeh took on some right wing fundamentalists for being anti-semitic?   So why isn’t George Bush asked about every anti-semitic rant by LaHaye or Wildmon since by the transitive property Timmeh is invoking, Bush has close spiritual advisors who work closely with them?

I’d guess that’s because Russert thinks Democrats, by definition, are weak creatures to be battered with irrelevant or offensive questions and Republicans are tough guys that are fun to have cocktail weenies beers with. Republicans are normative America for Russert and Russert would never do or say anything to cast aspersions on normative America.

Was Russert Push-Polling America?

I’ll pull the transcript when I can, but the line of questions on Louis Farrakhan and Libya was beyond the pale. What would Obama’s jewish supporters think if…?
The questioning of Clinton on her personal finances and her public schedule was equally badgering, though on a somewhat less explosive issue.

The last 10 minutes of the debate – with questions towards both candidates – have been shameful.

Post Title Disclaimer: There have been a lot of blog posts and diaries on the occurrence of push polling. In almost all cases, push polling isn’t actually taking place and obviously a question in a debate is not a push poll. But speculating on how information about Libya, Farrakhan, or Farrakhan’s specific statements would impact Obama’s support in the Jewish community is simply disgusting. It looked like Russert wanted Obama’s supporters to get new information that caused them to bolt, which is generally what push polling aims to do.

Update:

Here’s the transcript of the exchange between Russert and Obama on Farrakhan:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, one of the things in a campaign is that you have to react to unexpected developments.

On Sunday, the headline in your hometown paper, Chicago Tribune: “Louis Farrakhan Backs Obama for President at Nation of Islam Convention in Chicago.” Do you accept the support of Louis Farrakhan?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you reject his support?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, Tim, you know, I can’t say to somebody that he can’t say that he thinks I’m a good guy. (Laughter.) You know, I — you know, I — I have been very clear in my denunciations of him and his past statements, and I think that indicates to the American people what my stance is on those comments.

MR. RUSSERT: The problem some voters may have is, as you know, Reverend Farrakhan called Judaism “gutter religion.”

OBAMA: Tim, I think — I am very familiar with his record, as are the American people. That’s why I have consistently denounced it.

This is not something new. This is something that — I live in Chicago. He lives in Chicago. I’ve been very clear, in terms of me believing that what he has said is reprehensible and inappropriate. And I have consistently distanced myself from him.

RUSSERT: The title of one of your books, “Audacity of Hope,” you acknowledge you got from a sermon from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church. He said that Louis Farrakhan “epitomizes greatness.”

He said that he went to Libya in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan to visit with Moammar Gadhafi and that, when your political opponents found out about that, quote, “your Jewish support would dry up quicker than a snowball in Hell.”

RUSSERT: What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?

OBAMA: Tim, I have some of the strongest support from the Jewish community in my hometown of Chicago and in this presidential campaign. And the reason is because I have been a stalwart friend of Israel’s. I think they are one of our most important allies in the region, and I think that their security is sacrosanct, and that the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.

And the reason that I have such strong support is because they know that not only would I not tolerate anti-Semitism in any form, but also because of the fact that what I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African-American community and the Jewish community.

You know, I would not be sitting here were it not for a whole host of Jewish Americans, who supported the civil rights movement and helped to ensure that justice was served in the South. And that coalition has frayed over time around a whole host of issues, and part of my task in this process is making sure that those lines of communication and understanding are reopened.

But, you know, the reason that I have such strong support in the Jewish community and have historically — it was true in my U.S. Senate campaign and it’s true in this presidency — is because the people who know me best know that I consistently have not only befriended the Jewish community, not only have I been strong on Israel, but, more importantly, I’ve been willing to speak out even when it is not comfortable.

When I was — just last point I would make — when I was giving — had the honor of giving a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in conjunction with Martin Luther King’s birthday in front of a large African-American audience, I specifically spoke out against anti- Semitism within the African-American community. And that’s what gives people confidence that I will continue to do that when I’m president of the United States.

The two sections in bold from Russert strike me as the most outlandish, offensive lines coming from this alleged journalist. Russert was suggesting that Obama either was or was vulnerable to being perceived as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. That suggestion simply has no basis in reality and is part of a disturbing trend that every crazy thing either (a) some objectionable black person says or (b) any person Obama has ever met will be something that the media and Obama’s opponents demand he to respond to. Lastly, as a Jewish Democrat, I found it offensive that Russert would persistently suggest that Obama would have to defend himself from charges of anti-Semitism because an anti-Semite whose support he denounced happened to support him.

For what it’s worth, Russerts line of questioning here strikes me as worse than David Shuster’s “pimp” line regarding Chelsea Clinton.

Update II:

Speaking of denounce or reject, Clinton’s pushback on Obama’s Farrakhan answer was pretty bad, too. Aswini Anburajan of MSNBC’s First Read adjudicates the definitions of the two words in question:

For the word-o-philes out there, Obama wins with the word denounce which is more applicable to use when you find someone’s positions distasteful

re·ject -a verb used as an object…
1. to refuse to have, take, recognize, etc.: to reject the offer of a better job.
2. to refuse to grant (a request, demand, etc.).

de·nounce -verb (used with object), -nounced, -nounc·ing.
1. to condemn or censure openly or publicly: to denounce a politician as morally corrupt.

So that settles that.