'Lame-Stream Media' Charge is Getting Really Lame

Republican presidential candidates may have some legitimate complaints to make about media bias, but sometimes I think they protest too much.

For example, after the heavily Republican audience at the Grand Old Party's CNBC debate booed some of the moderators' questions, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina complained indignantly that she'd "never seen that before."

No? She must have missed the debates four years ago. Who could forget the Republican crowd's explosion of boos and jeers in South Carolina, two days before that state's pivotal primary?

The boos came after CNN's moderator John King opened the debate by asking former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about open marriage. King was following up on an interview in which Gingrich's ex-wife said he had sought one.

Gingrich called the question and the timing "as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

That was Gingrich's idea of coming clean. Don't answer the question; just spur the audience to drown out the question with boos.

That was easy. The conservative crowd was no more interested in hearing about Gingrich's former marriage than Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wanted to hear another word during CNN's Democratic presidential debate about Hillary Rodham Clinton's "damn emails."

In other words, candidates from every party complain about the questions they get in TV debates -- or, even worse for them, don't get. That's why pre-debate negotiations between campaigns and the networks are about as relaxed as the Syria peace talks in Vienna.

Does the ABTMF -- Always Blame the Media First -- strategy work? It did not stop Gingrich's big comeback. After losing Iowa's caucuses, exit polls showed Gingrich won South Carolina with the help of an unusual coalition, according to the New York Times: evangelical Christians, tea party supporters and those who call themselves "very conservative."

Not too conservative, apparently, to ignore Gingrich's personal life in ways they would never have forgiven in a Democrat.

Perhaps if Gingrich had found more journos to blame, he might have won the GOP nomination instead of Mitt Romney.

Ever since President Richard Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew unleashed the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism" (composed by speechwriter William Safire) to describe media whom Nixon never viewed as his friends, conservatives have waged an escalating war against what Sarah Palin likes to call the "liberal lame-stream media."

Sure, left-progressives also complain about their standard bearers' media coverage -- or lack of it. (I hear you, Sen. Bernie Sanders' fans.)

But to complain as frontrunner Ben Carson does about "gotcha!" questions sounds a bit short-sighted for a man who constantly defends free speech and decries "liberal political correctness." What about conservative correctness, Doctor?

But, after watching Donald Trump howl when Fox News' moderators behaved like real journalists, not just megaphones for the GOP, no one should be surprised that the GOP candidates went ballistic at their first chance to berate their old familiar "lame-stream" target.

Yet, contrary to Marco Rubio's complaint that the mainstream media are "the ultimate super PAC" for the Democratic Party, CNN's Anderson Cooper was hardly lobbing softballs at the donkey party's candidates. For example:

To Clinton on her political flip-flops: "Will you say anything to get elected?"

And, "Do you change your political identity based on who you're talking to?"

To Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist": "How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?"

To Lincoln Chafee, a self-described "block of granite," on his two party switches: "It seems like pretty soft granite."

None of these folks enjoyed such questions, but they didn't whine about it. Yet Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida attacked the "liberal media" with gusto and appear to have been rewarded for it with robust applause and improved polling numbers.

Knowing an opportunity when they hear of it, representatives for some of the Republican campaigns met this weekend to discuss how they could make themselves look even better. One questionable plan would stage debates independent of the RNC moderated by committed right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. Cruz calls them "real journalists." Oh, really? Interrogating people with the purpose of making them look good? As an old saying goes, that's not journalism; that's stenography.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)