There was a moment during John McCain’s women’s forum Thursday when the crowd went crazy.
Not about something the candidate said. Rather, it was a question from a high-heeled real estate executive that drove the audience to its feet, roaring:
“What do we do about the media?” asked Katie Everett of Greenwood Village.
Attacking the news media is nothing new in politics, especially by those lagging in the polls. Disgraced Nixon VP Spiro Agnew described news gatherers as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history,” whatever those mean.
The difference this year is that it’s not just campaigns, but also voters throwing spitballs.
“Everyone in my peer group is disgusted with the news media,” Everett told me.
Her own outrage stems from news stories about the sagging housing market that she says have hurt her business. She has pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars in newspaper advertising partly because she says our coverage of declining home values has failed to mention the few neighborhoods that “are doing really great.”
In the same vein Thursday, others went on to dis journalists for not writing smiley faces into coverage of the Iraq war.
“The way they were asking questions wasn’t fair to the way the nation believes,” Christine Davis of Centennial said.
Many in the crowd neared apoplexy about TV interviews of VP pick Gov. Sarah Palin. Apparently it was gotcha journalism to ask the candidate vying for the No. 2 job in America — even one who happens to have studied journalism — where she gets her news, whether she agrees with the Bush Doctrine and what her views are on Supreme Court decisions.
“Everyone knows they’re just trying to tear this woman apart,” Everett said.
Thankfully, McCain assured Everett that, no matter how evil, the media didn’t actually cause the economic crisis.
“I’d love to blame the media,” he told her. “I’ll blame them for a lot of other things. But not this one.”
My favorite media-basher was a woman identifying herself only as Pat who laid into me for asking whether she had expected McCain to address women’s issues at an event specifically for women. He did not.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all?” she scolded.
No, Pat, because my mom had no interest in raising a cyborg.
Skepticism about the media, just like skepticism about politicians and financiers, is necessary, maybe more than ever. But the notion that journalistic questions somehow undermine the national interest scares me, especially when a candidate such as Palin triggers sympathy by not answering.
Hours after McCain’s forum, Palin upped her contempt for the media — and the debate process itself — when flaunting her refusal to answer moderator Gwen Ifill’s indisputably fair questions.
“I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people . . .” she said.
So now it’s straighter to avoid questions than answer them?
Problem is, observes University of Denver history professor Susan Schulten, “Any attempt we make to analyze anti-media sentiment further fuels the irritation and proves the point that the media has a deaf ear.”
Which must make this column pretty annoying.
“I hope you’ll be fair,” Everett told me. “I hope we’re still friends on Monday.”
Something tells me that isn’t likely.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
