Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charlie Gibson to accompany Obama on Iraq trip

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>July 17, 2008
Media Stars Will Accompany Obama Overseas
By JIM RUTENBERG
WASHINGTON — 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.

But the coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

“In every campaign, time is a finite resource, so it is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain. “That being said, it certainly hasn’t escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama’s trip.”

Executives at the three traditional networks say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Mr. Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to Mr. McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of Mr. Obama’s primary battle with Mrs. Clinton, which was at a peak when Mr. McCain last went to Iraq.

The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that the three newscasts by the networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent roughly 114 minutes covering Mr. Obama since June. They spent about 48 minutes covering Mr. McCain, who made the rounds of the evening newscasts in satellite interviews last week.

As for the heavy coverage planned for Mr. Obama’s trip, the network executives said in interviews that, once again, the Democratic candidate was potentially benefiting from being a newer, untested politician. To that end, his first visit overseas since becoming the party’s presumptive nominee would be an opportunity for voters to see how Mr. Obama handles two of their major concerns: national security and foreign affairs.

“If this were John McCain’s first trip to the war zone, that would be a story and we would cover it big time,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News. “This is Senator Obama’s first trip — his positions and the public’s perception of him on national security issues are important.”

Mr. Friedman said Mr. McCain and the Republicans had helped make the visit a bigger story because they had repeatedly questioned Mr. Obama’s credentials, keeping a running count of the number of days that have passed since Mr. Obama last visited Iraq, in 2006.

The news industry’s fascination with Mr. Obama has carried over to general-interest magazines, with the candidate landing on considerably more covers in recent months than has Mr. McCain. In the last couple of weeks Mr. Obama has graced the front of Rolling Stone for the second time this year, and the cover of Us Weekly (both of which are owned by the company of a prominent Obama supporter, Jann S. Wenner). Beth Jacobson, a spokeswoman for Wenner Media, said the issues were among the better-selling magazines of the year.

Ned Martel, the deputy editor of Men’s Vogue, said, “He’s what is called in the magazine world an ‘interest driver.’ ” The magazine put Mr. Obama on its cover in 2006 and recently dispatched the photographer Annie Leibovitz to produce another spread for a coming issue. It did a feature on Mr. McCain in 2006 as well that did not make the cover.

The race in general has been a ratings boon for cable news outlets, but not necessarily for the network newscasts.

Chuck Todd, the political director for NBC News, said Mr. Obama’s ability to draw media interest should not be surprising. “This is the way all of the new guys are treated — whether it was Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush,” Mr. Todd said. “There’s always a candidate who gets more ‘new guy’ treatment versus the other one, and it’s not always positive.”

The large news media contingent that will travel with Mr. Obama will be a help if the trip goes wonderfully. But any gaffes will take place before a larger megaphone.

Nonetheless, network executives said, Mr. Obama’s campaign has proven itself particularly adept at courting that megaphone for big-event road trips. For instance, Mr. Obama’s campaign invited the major anchors to interview him overseas. Referring to Mr. McCain’s background as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, one news executive said, “If McCain went to Vietnam, all three anchors would jump at the chance to go with him.” This executive requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Details of the talks between the anchors and the campaign, first reported on the Web site of The Washington Post on Wednesday, had not been finalized as of the afternoon. And some networks were chafing at what the executives at all three described as an uncompromising approach to when and where Mr. Obama would grant the anchor interviews, which are to take place outside the war zone. But few doubted that ultimately, most, if not all, of the anchors would accept the terms.</div>

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This is what Newsweek is saying about this:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>With word that the three network news anchors will be joining Barack Obama on his trip overseas next week, the New York Times today raises the question of whether John McCain has been given short shrift when it comes to media coverage. It's been a festering complaint among McCain's senior aides, who haven't been shy about telling reporters (often down to the minute) how much time McCain has received on the evening news versus Obama. The Times correctly notes that the network anchors didn't travel with McCain on his last trip to Iraq in March, which also took him throughout the Middle East and Europe.

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But there's a big difference between McCain's trip and the one Obama will embark on next week to Europe and the Middle East. In what could be interpreted now as a possible strategic misstep, the McCain campaign chose not to take reporters along for the ride, forcing media outlets who wanted to cover the newly elected GOP nominee to travel on their own without any guarantee of getting anywhere near the senator. The small group of scribes who made the trek (Newsweek chose not to) faced a logistical nightmare, from arranging last-minute foreign visas to struggling to keep up with McCain as they flew commercially from stop to stop. (McCain traveled by a military aircraft.) In contrast, the Obama campaign is inviting reporters on its tour, handling all the logistics--including transportation--for what will certainly be a much larger press corps than usual.

Why didn't McCain take reporters on his first overseas visit since clinching the nomination? For one, McCain was on official Senate travel, and aides rightly worried about an onslaught of stories questioning whether he was improperly using his Senate office to benefit his presidential campaign. It was also a campaign in transition, and they worried they didn't have the manpower logistically to handle a large press corps on an overseas swing. The Arizona senator did do several media interviews while abroad, including a pre-arranged sit-down with CNN's John King in Saddam Hussein's old palace in Baghdad. And some of the campaign beat regulars were on hand when McCain made a big time gaffe, confusing Sunnis and Shiites. It made headlines back home, but as First Read notes, it didn't create nearly the stir it would have had Brian Williams, Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson been reported their evening newscast from the scene.

Still, McCain aides were disappointed that the senator's trip didn't generate more coverage back home--headlines they hoped would highlight McCain's foreign policy expertise. Indeed, some notable moments of McCain's trip went largely unnoticed back in the States, including a made-for-campaign moment of pleasantly surprised tourists chanting "Mac is Back! Mac is Back!" as the senator arrived at a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. In advance of Obama's trip, McCain aides have been critical of what they see as a double standard. This morning,McCain communication director Jill Hazelbaker called the Democratic nominee's jaunt a "first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas." (On his bus this afternoon in Kansas City, McCain said he didn't agree with Hazelbaker's remarks and told reporters he would "talk to her.") Yet mixed with that criticism must be a degree of disappointment at what McCain's March trip could have been.

UPDATE, 5:45 p.m.: Shortly after arriving in Michigan for a fundraiser, McCain went before reporters and clarified the remarks he made earlier this afternoon about Obama's overseas trip. McCain said he had been talking about Obama's trip to Iraq and Afghanistan-not the other stops on his tour-when he said he didn't think the visit was political in nature. "What Sen. Obama does in the other countries, whether political rallies or not, obviously would then give them a political flavor to say the least," McCain said.

The campaign organized the impromptu press conference after a quick campaign stop at Pronto Pup, a corn dog shop on the shores of White Lake in Western Michigan. As McCain spoke, Nicolle Wallace, a former White House aide who recently joined the campaign as an adviser, stood a few feet away, holding her cell phone toward McCain so that someone on the other end could hear. When McCain moved on to other subjects, Wallace walked away and began talking into the phone.

"If he has political rallies in other places, then obviously it's a political trip," McCain said. "Apparently it's gonna be if he is going to have a rally in Germany at the Brandenberg Gate, which is what is being publicly stated. Of course, if you have political rallies then it's a political event."</div>

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Newsweek says McCain might have made a misstep:

But there's a big difference between McCain's trip and the one Obama will embark on next week to Europe and the Middle East. In what could be interpreted now as a possible strategic misstep, the McCain campaign chose not to take reporters along for the ride,

Then says this:

"Why didn't McCain take reporters on his first overseas visit since clinching the nomination? For one, McCain was on official Senate travel, and aides rightly worried about an onslaught of stories questioning whether he was improperly using his Senate office to benefit his presidential campaign."

Why would it be interpreted as a misstep if there could have been question involving improperly using Senate travel?

Don't you think, that a campaign that needs money, that needs as much PR they can get, would not gladly welcome these three with open arms if they could?

 

I just took a crap that was over ONE HUNDRED COURICS!!!!