In his illuminating new e-book on covering the Obama re-election campaign, Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings reveals that President Obama secretly joined reporters for drinks once while the campaign was in Orlando, Fla. The “beer summit” with supporters is described by Hastings as little like teenage fans meeting Justin Bieber during his North American tour:
“The behavior of the assembled press corps was telling. Everyone, myself included, swooned. Swooned! Head over heels. One or two might have even lost their minds. We were all, on some level, deeply obsessed with Obama, crushing hard, still a little love there. This was nerd heaven, a politico’s paradise, the subject himself moving among us — shaking our hands, slapping our shoulders!”
Juxtapose this behavior from Buzzfeed’s finest, objective political reporter, with the obnoxious behavior of the reporter Ben Smith assigned to the Romney campaign at the same time:
Jon Ward, a political reporter for the Huffington Post, deserves a lot of credit for telling the truth about what he overheard:
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Reporters overheard on politico live stream speculating before Romney event that there is “a 40% chance that he says something stupid.” – @JonWard11
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The so-called “reporter” in question was apparently — and to no one’s surprise — one of Ben Smith’s head BenSmithers, McKay Coppins.
Yes, While Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings was swooning over Barack Obama while sharing a cocktail with the President, his poor colleague McKay Coppins, relegated to the Romney Campaign was openly trashing the GOP candidate before an event. THIS TIME an open mic caught him, how many times had he done it when the mics were not engaged?
But, this story, as fleshed out by Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering, is less about the duplicitous hacks at Buzzfeed as it is about the entire gaggle of media sycophants assigned to cover the President’s campaign and his next term.
They just can’t help themselves. Recall that in 2009, President-Elect paid a visit to the Washington Post offices. At the time, pool reporter New York Times’ Helene Cooper reported on the scene as reminiscent of The Beatles arriving at JFK in preparation for their first Ed Sullivan appearance:
Around 100 people–Post reporters perhaps?–awaited PEOTUS’s arrival, cheering and bobbing their coffee cups.
Pool is holding in a van outside, while Mr obama does his washington post interview, and will exercise enormous restraint by ending report before saying what really thinks about this turn of events.
We get it, you love the guy. Enjoy yourselves. But please try to restrain yourselves the next time you attempt to pretend to be objective and superior journalists who got into the business to “speak truth to power” and hold the government accountable to the people. Also, try to keep your own smug, self-satisfaction in check when you look at yourselves in the mirror Monday morning.