When a reporter calls in for a conference call, he or she is asked by an operator to provide his or her name and media outlet. Then when it comes time for questions, there is a long pause–long enough for someone in the campaign to select whom should be called on. This has caused several journalists who have participated in these calls to wonder: is the McCain campaign screening reporters, and, if so, on what basis? A reporter for a progressive media outlet says that he has tried at least half a dozen times to ask a question on a McCain conference call and has had never been selected. The same has happened to me. No matter how quickly I press *1, I’m never afforded the opportunity to pose a question. During a June 27 McCain campaign call with former Republican Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift (who was deriding Obama for holding a unity rally with Hillary Clinton at Unity, New Hampshire), I raised my hand, electronically. Two reporters were called on–one from AOL News, the other from the Tampa Tribune–and then the McCain aide hosting the call said, “Seems we are out of questions,” and ended the call. My hand was still up.
From the few McCain campaign conference calls I’ve been on, I can recall Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein asking Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty a question during a June 3 conference call. Why would the McCain campaign blackball Mother Jones but not the Huffington Post? True, the HuffPo might be a tad more respectable than Mother Jones–I’ve never seen the HuffPo run a photo essay on phone sex operators, for example. Maybe Corn’s phone is broken? Even if the McCain camp has screened out lefty reporters, that’s no worse than the Obama campaign’s treatment of conservative journalists. I can’t even get Obama’s press flacks to return my phone calls or emails.
