McCain Campaign Plays Spin the Voters (And the Press, Too)

By Frank D. Russo

Here are three short ones from some of my favorite sites on the net on the ferocious spinning we are getting following the Republican convention.

From David Dayen:
d-day

'Tis the season for the press to be played by Republican spinners. You'd think that after eight years' worth of lies told directly to their face they'd stop believing this stuff. But no.

Carl Cameron, who works for the other team so is little more than a propagandist, dutifully typed up a story about the Obama campaign tossing in the trash 12,000 flags after their convention. It's completely untrue, yet other news outlets ran with it.

The McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the dumbest mistake in the history of political conventions by projecting Walter Reed Middle School behind John McCain's speech instead of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which they clearly preferred. Instead they claimed that it was part of the images of Americana that played behind him, and public education was part of it. Except they stopped the parade of images when one of them was clearly wrong:

“But you don't need the inside scoop to know what happened here. Those who watched the convention closely know that through the event, the screen backdrop had rotating video of what Bounds called "images of Americana." Stuff would cycle in and out.

“But that's not what happened with McCain. Our crack analysts at TPM HQ pulled the tape. And what happened in McCains case was that the green screen was up for 5 or 6 minutes. Then it got pulled. It was replaced briefly by a cornfield. And then after a few moments of that it was the picture of the flag, which appeared as a blue screen to viewers on tv. That remained through McCain's entire speech. No more changes. It was pretty clear that someone on McCain's staff realized the goof a few minutes into the speech, cancelled the pre-programmed order of images and hurriedly slotted in flag image to save the day.”

And yet the NYT bought that. Unbelievable.

Journalists really have the lowest self-image of any profession in America. They are lied to and lied to again and yet they print up the spin every time.

Here's a good piece, actually, about the Walter Reed Middle School mixup, wherein middle school students show themselves to be keener than the New York Times:

“"McCain messed up. He was talking about Walter Reed hospital, and he used our picture by mistake," said 11-year-old Joshua.”

Gov. Palin Interview Clock

Comments

Posted by: Frank D. Russo at September 7, 2008 02:38 PM

Posted by: Mario Grasso at September 8, 2008 11:01 AM

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