Smear Campaign Follies

Boy, the media is making a hash of these smear jobs and attempts to segue the campaigns into irrelevancy. The first problem is that they're covering this stuff so intently in the first place. Reporters do not have to be conduits for oppo research if they don't want to be. They keep talking about whether these stories will be a "distraction" while reporting them, making the distraction themselves. The second, more glaring problem, and why the first problem is so important, is that they don't know how to cover these things responsibly.

I saw this on CNN early this morning. John Roberts was talking about the smear campaign, trying to do the equivalency dance, and actually said (I'm paraphrasing) "Obama is trying to tie McCain to the Keating Five". Now, maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that like saying John Lennon was "tied" to the Beatles? He was a Beatle! John McCain WAS one of the Keating Five.

The media doesn't have a relevance or salience filter. A question raised about Bill Ayers=a question raised about Charles Keating. But the two aren't equal, nor are they equally relevant. Similarly, what the candidates are saying in their defense/explanation of these stories is also not equal. John Dowd flat-out lied to reporters yesterday in claiming that John McCain never knew about his wife's investment in a Keating strip mall. He ASKED THE QUESTION during the ethics committee hearings, fercryinoutloud. On the other hand, Republicans in Illinois consider smearing Obama with the Ayers connection to be ridiculous.

Because they are simply terrible at determining facts in the face of spin, and because they prefer to act as detached observers rather than the vital editors who decide what does and does not get covered, reporters should just stay away from this toxic stuff entirely.