One thing is missing from the media obsession with Obama’s new campaign against negative advertising: McCain’s exoneration.

After naming Michelle Obama “a Republican target,” an article from CBS News uses conspicuous name-dropping to associate “the first blow” with Cindy McCain. Quoting a speaker who introduced Cindy as “proud of her country, not just once but always,” the article labors to establish the offense to Michelle—but skates around the fact that Cindy had nothing to do with it.

John McCain and Barack Obama agreed last week to keep the campaign “civil,” and avoid the negative advertising strategies that have marred previous presidential competitions. Yesterday, however, the liberal online magazine Salon.com published an article linking McCain to various conservative groups that have produced ads opposing Obama. The column calls on the candidate to ask for his party’s “fat cat donors” not to support negative advertising. Disregarding McCain’s statement publicly distancing himself from some recent negative ads, the article goes on to make the accusation that “This year’s McCain likes to talk reform and act unreformed.”

Does he? In April, even before the gentleman’s agreement to be civil last week, McCain asked the North Carolina Republican party to cancel an anti-Obama ad. And of the supposed anti-Michelle campaign, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin says, the criticism isn’t coming only from Republicans. Asked about some of the rumors about Michelle Obama circulating the internet, Malkin noted, “if you go online and you look for some of these rumors, the proponents of these rumors are Hillary supporters. It’s coming from the left wing, not the right wing.”

For all the media protestations against Republican groups’ negative ads, the continual tie-ins to McCain may well constitute their own negative “smear” campaign—but the Democratic party isn’t leaving it up to chance. Despite the candidates’ agreement on June 4, the Democratic National Convention has been airing an anti-McCain spot since late April.

Scott McClellan’s latest book, now number one on Amazon.com, not only has the White House treading water, but it’s caused a rash of journalist’s remorse. As McClellan accuses the media of being too soft and not liberal enough during the run-up to the Iraq war, some media members are putting their tails between their legs.

Reporters such as Katie Couric are shouting Amen to McClellan’s media-failed-us sermon. She calls the lack of criticism “one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.” Author Greg Mitchell says that, even after five years, “there was almost no [media] self-assessment.” And even before McClellan, in an April speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, award-winning producer, director, and actor Tim Robbins lambasted the media for its lack of scrutiny.

There are big names such as NBC’s Tom Brokaw and ABC’s Charlie Gibson who refuse to lash themselves. But the prevailing sentiment is that the media should adorn black scarves and mourn the death of journalistic integrity.

But does a supposed lack of scrutiny then justify an explosive criticism, even hate, now? A new Harvard study shows the dangers of such a pendulum swing. In February, Radha Iyengar and Jonathan Monten released a study showing that “in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increase by 5-10 percent.” They call this an “emboldenment effect.” As cost-critical statements increase at home, insurgencies increase in Iraq and that translates into lives lost.

So what does this mean? Should public debate be squashed? Certainly not. But is there a way to hold others accountable while remaining tasteful, respectful, and fair? Can we have criticism, especially in the media, without emboldening divisiveness? Ironically, during his criticism-laced talk, Robbins says yes.

Robbins’s climax recognizes language’s power. “You [journalists and broadcasters] have the power to turn this nation away from the hatred and divisive dialogue that has rendered such a corrosive effect on our body politic,” he says. “You can lift us up into a more enlightened age.”

We cannot know exactly which words and statements increase insurgent’s resolve. Terrorist reasoning is flawed and defies logic. But Robbins, Iyengar, and Monten remind us of a piercing truth that must influence current and future dialogue: Life and death are in the power of the tongue.

In a tell-all book, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has made some bold, revealing, and, for those close to him, surprising and confusing accusations against the current administration. An overlooked report, however, may explain his actions.

In his book (What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception), McClellan claims that the administration was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” that the president “veered terribly off course,” and that he “confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed . . . during a time of war.”

He also says that “the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation” during the run-up to the war in Iraq, and that “if it had, the country would have been better served.” But while critiquing the president and the administration is welcomed, even necessary, many are surprised by the comments and feel they are uncharacteristic.

Karl Rove, mentioned extensively in the book, classified McClellan’s comments as those befitting “a left-wing blogger.” One Republican close to the White House dubbed the book “a desperate attempt to salvage [McClellan’s] reputation by junking the one positive attribute people saw in him—loyalty.” McClellan’s ex-boss, former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the book “perplexed” him.

The White House agrees, calling it the work of an angry former staffer. “Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” Press Secretary Dana Perino said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad—this is not the Scott we knew.”

But one largely ignored fact may explain the Jekyll and Hyde McClellan. The Wall Street Journal reports that only after working with publishers and editors did McClellan begin to formulate his critiques. “Many of the conclusions I’ve reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process,” he writes in the book.

That secrets abound in an administration should not be surprising. All presidencies have their skeletons. Some secrets are even important to national security. What is surprising is that a group of outside writers were able to “shape the thinking” of a man known for his unquestioned loyalty.

And as numerous others release accounts criticizing the Bush administration, an important question arises: have these confidants prostituted their loyalty for the sake of popularity and book sales? For those who say yes, the irony is apparent: the liberal media may finally have lived up to its reputation. The debate now is whether we are better served because of it.

This weekend, many greeted with apoplectic reprehension Hillary Clinton’s invocation of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination to justify staying in the Democratic presidential race, with the media playing up its discomfiting present-day tie-in as evidencing her win-at-any-costs attitude and flippancy to concerns over Barack Obama’s safety. (He’s now had Secret Service protection for more than a year).

But even some conservatives have admitted that Clinton’s remarks, like others she’s made campaigning, were misconstrued. (Clinton’s reasoning for staying in the fight, in full context, to The Argus Leader went like this: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”) Critics of the media’s coverage say the incident is really more evidence that both she and John McCain are victim of excessive media nitpicking while Obama—recently called, in a rare attack, a “one-man gaffe machine” by ABC News’s Jake Tapper—has had, and continues to create, his share of gaffes, cringe-worthy one-liners and faux pas that often are glossed over by reporters.

While the media has skewered Clinton (deservedly) for things like ”sniper”-gate and now RFK-gate, and raked McCain over the coals for confusedly claiming that Iran, a predominantly Shiite country, was training members for al Qaeda, which is Sunni, Obama has managed to almost silently dole out a variety of mistakes, from the relatively minor (mistaking the name of the town he’s speaking in) to the arguably less minor (claiming he would both shun and meet with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, after decrying his connections to the terrorist group FARC).

Two weeks ago, stumping in Missouri, Obama said of Arabic translators in Iraq, “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” Only problem: Arabic speakers wouldn’t be of much use around Afghanis, who speak Pashtu, Dari, Farsi and a dozen other languages, but rarely Arabic.

Aside from the now infamous 57 states he said he’s campaigned in (which spawned a unique flag lapel pin that he might actually wear), Obama apparently also frequently has misspoken or mistaken the name of the town he’s stumping in. Four times in a speech last week he called to Sunrise, Fla., semi-famous for its role in the 2000 presidential recount, as “Sunshine”; the week before, he turned Sioux Falls, S.D., into “Sioux City” and, days later, after tornadoes devastated Kansas, killing 12 people, summed up the tragedy: “Ten thousand people died—a whole town destroyed.”

The more evenhanded of critics have pointed out, regarding Obama’s mostly inconsequential gaffes, that it’s not the media’s nitpicking that they object to (that is, McCain’s age and inability to recall that Iran is Shiite under pressure probably is fair game) so much as the need for a uniform standard.

The New York Times is again deflecting charges of gunning for the Bush administration after it dedicated some 7,800 words yesterday to how the Pentagon runs a “media Trojan horse.” Inside the would-be horse, the story lays out, are retired military officers who have been fed and stand ready to parrot deceitful or too-optimistic analyses of the wars in Iraq and on terror.

“To the public,” the story reads ominously, “these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as ‘military analysts.’” Yet “[h]idden behind that appearance of objectivity” is “a Pentagon information apparatus” used “to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.”

The Times’s critics have dismissed it as trumped-up non-news, analogizing the reportage to what happens when, having embarked on a bear hunt, you return with a squirrel. “The Times thought it was on to something very big, ended up with something very small, and then took what little they had and tried to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear,” writes John Podhoretz. He says the honest thing to do would have been to kill the piece, but investigative journalism is too cost-prohibitive, as well as labor- and time-intensive, to admit, “You know what? This just didn’t pan out.”

Assembled from 8,000 pages of Defense Department e-mails and internal documents that the Times sued to obtain, the story is nonetheless more bad news for an administration many Americans already distrust (and that brought them Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher). Liberals have reacted to the “apparatus” like it is an unheard-of Orwellian fiasco. Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell laments how pro-war talking points were foisted onto “unsuspecting viewers.” Conservatives like Max Boot, meanwhile, have said it’s “part and parcel of the daily grind of Washington journalism in which the Times is, of course, a leading participant.”

The Times story waxes conspiratorial, explaining that analysts, whose titles author David Barstow wraps in quotes, are “in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust.” (Though it’s true former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t emerge from the piece unscathed.) But the murkiest ties are probably those between the on-air analysts and the private defense contractors they work for—contractors that neither news organizations as varied as CNN and even the Times, assuming they knew of them to begin with, nor the analysts themselves disclosed.

Among critics’ other points is that it’s probably silly, given the pro-Pentagon inclinations, typically right-of-center ideologies and Establishment loyalties upper-echelon generals hold, to expect any analyst with that background not to shill for these policies, even be chummy with the Pentagon. (Chances are, he helped shape what he’s asked to analyze.) Does the Times expect “neutrality,” they ask, when it talks to former Bush administration officials about the Bush administration? Would it shock reporters to discover other media commentators and pundits regularly consult with or are even advised by government or industry insiders?

Michael Goldfarb, editor of the magazine infamously at the epicenter of neoconservatism, The Weekly Standard, argues it probably wouldn’t shock many Americas: “The charge is a lack of transparency, and it rests on the assumption that Americans are too stupid to surmise the likely ideological and institutional biases of a former general. . . . Of course, Americans are not so stupid, and I suspect most will appreciate the irony of the New York Times judging retired military officers as insufficiently objective in their analysis of the war in Iraq.”

Both Obama and Clinton received favorable press coverage from December 2007 to last month, according to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs: 83% of Obama and 53% of Clinton stories were positive. But just before the Texas and Ohio primaries some reporters became rambunctious, and we should expect to see more of that.

Why? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the only means of neutralizing the effect of newspaper is to multiply their numbers.”

A generation ago the number of news outlets in America was the lowest ever in proportion to our population, and liberal reporters who virtually monopolized media could write and say the darndest things with little risk of public chastisement. In the Internet and talk radio age, much has changed.

Exhibit 1: the turnabout of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who early in February reacted to one Obama victory by saying, “I felt this thrill going up my leg…. [Obama] seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.” Widely ridiculed for such over-the-top treatment, Matthews regained some reportorial prestige just before the Texas primary by aggressively questioning Kirk Watson, a former Austin mayor who is now a state senator and an Obama supporter.

“What has he accomplished, sir?” Matthews demanded. “You say you support him. Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments. You’ve supported him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments.” The poor politician’s answer was instructive: “Well, I’m not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments.”

Clinton supporters would probably have had the same problem, but Matthews pressed on: “Can you name any? Can you name anything he’s accomplished as a congressman?” Watson, appearing as dumb as Sherlock Holmes’s Watson: “No, I’m not going to be able to do that tonight.” Matthews: “Well, that is a problem isn’t it?”

Yes, it is, and the press adulation that Obama received until recently may have created a backlash. A candidate benefits when reporters give him messianic status, but when they start to report that others are treating him as a messiah, the worm has turned. A Lexis-Nexis search showed an average of 11 articles per month with “Obama” and “messiah” in them during 2007, 48 during January 2008, 56 during the first half of February, and 153 during the second half of the month.

Late last month the discomfort of liberal columnists became increasingly evident. Time’s Joe Klein: “Something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism. …” The Los Angeles Times’ Joel Stein: “the Cult of Obama.” The New York Times’ Paul Krugman: “The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.” ABC’s Jake Tapper: the “Helter-Skelter cultish qualities” of “Obama worshipers.”

NBC’s Saturday Night Live also made fun of mediacrats who kiss up to Obama. And the unkindest cut of all, from The Tonight Show’s Jay Leno on the eve of the Texas and Ohio primaries: “If you believe the media, Barack Obama was born in a manger.” Obama’s free lunch may be over.

Over at The XX Factor, where “Slate women blog about politics,” Dahlia Lithwick makes a good point about the media’s involvement with this election.

Hillary Clinton has somehow decided she’s running against us. Between this Hillary-versus-the-media meme and the Obama/messiah silliness, we in the media may have finally managed the inconceivable: The entire focus of the primary race has officially become ourselves. It reminds me of that old joke: But enough about me, what do you think of me?

I’m guessing the media love this, even if they won’t admit it.  Just about every human being loves power, and this election is pointing out the media’s power, reinforcing for many journalists the original reasons that many of them got into journalism: to have some kind of effect on the world.

I’m trying to figure out why I like Charles Gibson. I have no good reason. I know nothing about him. I never watched Good Morning America — not even once. Now, though, I find myself tuning in to ABC to catch the evening news, even though I have not been able to tolerate network news for quite some time.

Not that the other networks offer Charlie any competition. I cannot abide Katie Couric’s wrapping herself in the mantle of “serious newswoman.” That went out the window after she — with no evidence whatsoever –  blamed evangelical “hate” for the death of Matthew Shepard. The motive turned out to be cash and drugs, with Shepard a target of opportunity, a well-dressed college kid whose wallet looked like easy pickins’. That’s one Katie can never take back.

Then there’s NBC’s Brian Williams. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him that rankles. To be fair, I heard he was pretty funny when he guested on Saturday Night Live. But if I wanted my news delivered by someone who was funny on SNL, I’d pick Will Ferrell.

So that leaves Charles Gibson, who gives me the news straight, but in a pleasant way, like…oh, I don’t know…a favorite uncle? I like his easy delivery and the way he avoids that smirking irony some anchors affect. I purposely didn’t try Googling up any dirt on the guy before writing this, because I’ve only recently become curious about him.

Maybe you can tell me: Am I wrong to heart Charles Gibson?

I am not a big fan of Fox News for the same reason I’m not a big fan of most TV news.  It’s TV news.  I’m also not a fan of Fox News because they present themselves in a way that plays to the stereotype of conservatives in the minds of most liberals.  Fox News is a satire of itself, refusing to hide any conservative bias on most counts.  Yet, because I know about the bias and because they so proudly reveal it, Fox News is easier to watch than CNN or MSNBC, who so proudly pretend to be objective.  Mostly, I just read newspapers.

But Shepherd Smith, the evening anchor of Fox News, is my favorite of all news anchors, not only because we share a home state, but because he gets the joke.  He seems to appreciate that the news is mostly fluff.  He doesn’t take himself seriously, and doesn’t pretend to take the unserious stuff all that seriously.  And so, I appreciate this video of him during an interview on Fox News, where a former advisor of Al Gore tosses out some slightly prejudicial comments about Fox News.  He calls her on it, and I think he wins.

The American Academy of Pediatrics had hoped to stop the premiere episode of a new ABC legal drama that it says could undermine children’s vaccinations. In the opening story line of “Eli Stone,” the mother of an autistic child is awarded $5.2 million in damages after it is revealed that the CEO of a vaccine maker kept his daughter from getting the company’s mercury-based vaccine.

This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics fired off a letter to network executives urging them to cancel the show. ABC refused, but agreed to air a disclaimer and a link to the CDC’s autism site.

The show’s producers say it is “even-handed” and presents both sides. They say they never intended to suggest that children should not be vaccinated and argue that viewers do not look to fiction for medical information.

But can we really deny that even fictional media–created purely for entertainment–still influence people? After all, isn’t that part of the point of all those fun Super Bowl commercials we will see this Sunday?