Robert P. Laurence

San Diego Television

Hillary complains, the media jump

And: Two new series from Fox
By Robert P. Laurence
Posted on Mar 07 2008
Last updated Mar 07 2008

Recent coverage of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination reminds me of the Subway commercial with the football referee making an announcement.

You know the one. The ref admits he “totally blew” a call and promises to “penalize the other team for no good reason in the second half to even things up.”

Same thing is happening now. Sen. Hillary Clinton complained that she was getting tougher coverage than was Sen. Barack Obama. Apparently she didn’t like reading that he drew bigger crowds, was a more eloquent speaker and had won 10 primaries in a row.

The media referees immediately flopped into anguished-self-examination mode, clasped Clinton to their bosom and begged forgiveness. Her “vote-for-me-or-die” commercial got free air play on every TV news show but “Nancy Grace.” “Saturday Night Live” aired not one, but two show-opening sketches in consecutive weeks claiming that the media favored Obama. Clinton guested on SNL the weekend before the Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island primaries. Then Jon Stewart brought her on “The Daily Show” the Monday night before the primaries.

While the effort to even things up shifted into high gear, ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked on “Good Morning America,” “Have all of us in the media used boxing gloves gloves on Clinton and kid gloves on Obama?” Queried the New York Times: “Are the media giving Obama a free ride?”

“On the Media,” National Public Radio’s weekly analysis of media issues, jumped on the mea-culpa bandwagon. Two consecutive interviews on the March 2 show, heard on KPBS-FM in San Diego, took up Clinton’s cause. “They are besotted (with Obama). I mean, there’s no question,” said National Journal columnist Bill Powers. If Powers had in mind a single concrete example of a story that was slanted in Obama’s favor, or against Clinton, he didn’t mention it.

Just to reassure anyone who wasn’t positive where “On the Media” stood on the issue, host Brooke Gladstone followed the Powers interview with another on the same theme. She introduced the second Q-and-A, with John Heileman from New York Magazine, with her own comment: “Hillary Clinton has had a tougher time with the press lately, and she knows it.” Then she played a sound clip of Clinton’s complaint in a debate that “I seem to get the first question all the time.”

Interestingly, Heileman tried to keep things a little straighter, pointing out that all politicians are self-serving when dealing with the media, but Gladstone stuck to her Obama-gets-all-the-breaks mantra: “The media have cast that aura of inevitability upon Barack Obama.”

On the public TV side, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler analyzed the game succinctly in his on-line column: “Sen. Hillary Clinton’s decision to challenge the press to generate more critical coverage of Sen. Barack Obama worked. Not only was there a noticeable shift in critical focus and questioning away from Clinton and toward Obama, the press seemed to buy into the idea they, until now, had been soft on Obama and tougher on Clinton.”

So far, though, nobody seems to be asking if it was right to play Clinton’s commercial so many times in the guise of news coverage, and nobody seems to be questioning the fairness of those national TV appearances on the eve of the primaries.

Whether the media will react the same way to any Obama complaints about the way coverage is going now remains to be seen. But I don’t think so. By now, the campaign press may be feeling embarrassed over having been so easily intimidated and bamboozled.

Over the long haul of the campaign, the coverage may average out. Unfair to one candidate today, unfair to another tomorrow – which doesn’t add up to fairness, really. But don’t expect another deliberate, quite so blatant effort to even things up.

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Fox debuts another two new series in the next week. Both star women who have ridden better vehicles and both seem destined for early breakdowns.

“Canterbury’s Law” stars former “ER” cast member Julianna Margulies as crusading criminal defense lawyer Elizabeth Canterbury. (8 p.m. Mondays starting March 10 on XETV/Channel 6)

Canterbury’s aggressive, hard-edged style seems modeled on the driving prosecutor that James Woods plays in CBS’s “Shark,” but Margulies seems to be straining to make it work for her.

In the pilot episode, the married Canterbury has her investigator and extra-curricular lover chat up a juror outside the courtroom to learn how her case is going, then she suborns perjury to cinch the case. At this rate, “Canterbury’s Law” could be headed for quick disbarment.

Parker Posey, a fine, respected actress familiar from frequent roles in independent films, apparently is hoping for steadier work in the Fox sitcom “The Return of Jezebel James.” (8:30 p.m. Fridays beginning March 14)

Just to get things started with a little confusion, Posey doesn’t play the title character. No, she plays Sarah Tompkins, a children’s book editor. Jezebel is a character in one of her books.

Posey works really hard at being a cute, lovably ditzy sitcom character, circa 1960, but you can see the wheels turning in her head. This is not the sort of material she’s accustomed to.

Wanting a child, Sarah talks her sister, Coco (Lauren Ambrose, “Six Feet Under”), into becoming a surrogate for her. The “why” of this is complicated, as are the many, many long arguments that ensue between various characters. Long and complicated, but not funny.

Parker Posey should be seen again soon in another independent movie at a theater near you.

About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971.
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Comments

Posted by SantaCruz	March 10, 2008
Apparently, you are basing your opinion on what you think about Senator Clinton vs. the fact that I can go out and talk to all the Obama supporters in Santa Cruz and they do not know what Tony Rezko has to do with Senator Obama. They do not know that he has a 17 year friendship with Mr. Rezko who had over one 100 articles written about the investigations into his freudulent activities with Chicago politicians. They do not realize the Mr. Rezko raised funds for at least $120,000 for Senator Obama's various senate races. Please, why don't they know? The media will not cover important issues which would effect why We the People might need to know to hire the Command in Chief. I had to pass security clearances for some of my jobs. Where is the transparency Senator Obama promised?

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