In this “three-plus-Bill” presidential campaign, the perception of political imbalance and unfairness gets tricky to sort out.
Republican supporters of John McCain feel he is getting short shrift while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama still struggle for the Democratic nomination at least until the Pennsylvania primary, seven weeks away, and probably well beyond.
Those partisans are backed by a national media survey that shows McCain currently getting one-fourth the coverage of the two Democrats. That and the lack of major Page 1 presence isn’t their only complaint.
The large caricature of a jowly McCain illustrating an op-ed column brought howls Thursday, just as earlier caricatures of Obama’s ears or Clinton’s mouth have convinced some readers that the Tribune is out to get one candidate or the other.
Obama backers say journalists are creating too much out of too little concerning Obama’s relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The builder’s trial on corruption charges began Thursday and news coverage of that case almost invariably makes a reference to Rezko’s Obama connection.
Yet Clinton supporters claim that the Obama coverage has been fawning and uncritical. They believe the media look on Obama as the favored youngest brother, the baby of the family, while Clinton takes the role of the mean older sister.
A Pew Research Center weekly report on campaign coverage suggested that may have changed recently after a “Saturday Night Live” sketch mocked campaign reporters for being soft on Obama.
The Clinton campaign seized on the notion of media bias and pushed reporters to question Obama and themselves. Oddly, that echoes the complaint conservatives often have used on the so-called liberal media. Complaints of bias, including the issues of race and gender, from whatever source are effective in putting journalists on the defensive.
I called this a three-plus-Bill contest because there is one more unavoidable factor: Stories and questions about former President Bill Clinton are also part of the equation about fairness and election coverage.
Monday, for instance, news editors at the Tribune had a spirited debate about whether to run a story on the front page about the former president’s finances and a lucrative stock deal. Was it fair to raise the issue the day of the primaries in Ohio and Texas?
The story raised questions about the scope of Bill Clinton’s fundraising for his charitable foundation and for his presidential library. Although both Clintons have complied with legal filing requirements, the methods and amounts of Bill Clinton’s finances are still quite opaque.
Some editors argued to hold the story until after the primaries; others said it would be unfair to wait.
The story centered on Bill Clinton but it certainly reflected on his wife and it noted that, despite repeated questions, she has not committed to voluntarily releasing her tax returns. She has only agreed to “releasing tax information at tax time in April.” (Obama has opened his tax returns to public view, McCain has not.)
I thought editors chose correctly when they decided to put the detailed and complex story about Bill Clinton on the front page.
What created consternation among Clinton followers reading the earliest edition of the Tribune, however, came the next day, after Hillary Clinton had won the vote in Ohio and Texas.
As the votes were being counted in Ohio, photographers waited for Clinton to greet her cheering supporters. The first photo to arrive showed a smiling winner at the podium, but a floating piece of confetti made it appear to some readers that Clinton had a black eye. Another piece of confetti looked like a bandage on her chin.
“You should be ashamed,” railed one of several callers. Another reader was certain the choice of that photo displayed that “Men just cannot handle a smart woman.”
Checking the computer system, the photo arrived at 10:28 p.m., nearly an hour past the usual deadline for front-page photos. Editors had waited until the last allowable minutes to show Clinton acknowledging her win. The presses started rolling with that photo.
Twenty-six minutes later, at 10:49, another photo, this one with Clinton and her daughter Chelsea smiling (without confetti), moved and editors replaced the first photo in what press workers call a rolling replate. That picture was the one most readers saw.
The same day, a different group of readers looked at the similarly sized photo of Barack Obama on the front page. Rather than his usual smile, this image captured him with a stern look. While the photo was chosen to fit the tone of the story, readers were convinced the newspaper’s sole desire was to make Obama seem truculent and like, well, a loser.
That photo of Obama looks like he’s snarling, several readers insisted, but he’s just being passionate. Such interpretive views of photos make decisions about photos all the more challenging.
The day after the primary, a few readers objected to the small photo of McCain and his wife, Cindy, but there was no mention of imbalance on the following day with a large photo of McCain and President Bush centered on Page 1.
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Timothy J. McNulty is the Tribune’s public editor. His e-mail address is tmcnulty@tribune.com
