America’s Press Corps: Whiney Babies
Everyone else seems to be writing about this lovely example of journalists who are crybaby diaperpants, so I’ll pile on too.
Adam “Adnags” Nagourney, a well known hack with an agenda, made a pee-pee in his diapers because he was crying so hard after the Obama campaign scolded him for (what else) trafficking in misinformation.
Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama’s press office. The campaign was irked by the Times’ latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee’s accompanying front-page piece titled “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” which was running in the morning’s paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.
But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”
Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others,” Nagourney tells me. “I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”
Oh boohoohooohoooooo. The rest of the article is a litany of complaints from feeble-minded boobs like Karen Tumulty, but as dday at Digby’s Hullabaloo points out, they’re crying crocodile tears:
The idea that the press considers the Obama campaign operation “young and arrogant” both really betrays their bias and displays a stunning lack of self-awareness.
After all, the press has lived through eight years of a notoriously tight-lipped and secretive White House, whose President would regularly demean them in public and call them major league assholes behind their back, and they lapped it all up, believing Bush to be a popular and mythic hero long after the public had turned away.
But of course, he was a Republican, and all that humiliation was just locker-room joshing. The Democrat is supposed to be afraid of the press, because they can take him or her down over an afternoon tea, and the fact that this guy isn’t totally letting the media run roughshod over him must be deeply frustrating.
Adnag’s bleating that “If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first” betrays a stunning and surely self-imposed ignorance on the way journalism works, and one that I have experienced myself. Long time readers may remember my run-in with Philadelphia’s own Michelle Malkin wannabe, the execrable and ridiculous Christine Flowers. She had written one of her typically stupid columns, which elicited a letter to the editor from me, to which she responded (before my LTE was actually published, which caused her some problems later):
Dear Brendan (I hope you won’t be too upset at my familiarity)
I had a chance to read your letter to the editor in response to my recent oped on ID and hypocritical judges in the Daily News. Sorry you don’t like my writing, but since I’ll probably be around for a while, just save yourself the indigestion and don’t read anything that has my byline in the future.
And next time, you could always email the source; I have more respect for people who actually engage in dialogue with the writers. I may disagree with them, but I respect them nonetheless. I don’t have a blog, but my email is out there for all to use. I don’t shy away from challeges.
Cheers,
Christine Flowers
Adnags, like Christine, doesn’t quite get the concept of “writing to public”, which should be embarrassing to him since he’s been at the Times since 1996. When you write to the public, you get a public response, not a private response. That’s why they’re called “letters to the editor”, and the topics of those letters are, y’know, about what the paper published. You don’t get to complain that the letter writer didn’t address you personally and off-the-record. When you’re a reporter (or a columnist) you don’t get to make public claims but private feedback.
…adding that, as “Moe Szyslak” points out in the comments at atrios’s place, “And, reading the link, they DID contact him first, and he blew them off and went to bed. The campaign immediately set to work to right the record, and by the time Nags woke up people were contacting him. Good campaign!”
People like Adnags need to grow up and set their pee-pee stained diapers aside. Political camapigns issue rebuttals all the time, and they don’t need to ask the reporter’s permission before doing so.
So Adnags, you big blubbering baby, this one’s for you.
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