Good News?

by digby

This is a double edged sword. It’s good to get major coverage, but it depends on what kind of coverage it is. We have no way of knowing how this will be reported:

Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last March was a low-key affair: With a small retinue of reporters chasing him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on Mr. McCain’s visit there from New York, including it in the “in other political news” portion of his newscast.

But when Senator Barack Obama heads for Iraq and other places overseas this summer, Mr. Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two network evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Mr. Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Mr. Obama on successive nights.

And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Mr. Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seatmates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Mr. Obama’s first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. A “Meet the Press” interview is also being planned.

The extraordinary coverage planned for Mr. Obama’s trip, though in part solicited by aides, reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first black presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.

I would expect the coverage of this trip to be positive, barring some sort of mistake. Clearly all the celebrity journos want to make themselves part of the story and bask in Obama’s glow. But they are likely to overdue it and turn it into a sideshow, which may or may not end up being good for Obama in the long run. The downside of them overdoing the fawning is that the right will swing into high gear working the refs and will demand retribution. The boyz and gurlz will feel just terrible about being so unfair.

It would almost always be better to have a serious, professional press corps on trips like this instead of a bunch of preening TV stars. But since we don’t have such a thing at least they seem to be using their shallow narcissism to promote the good guys as well as themselves for once. It’s the best you can do.

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