Republicans don't buy reporters enough drinks.
Well, that's only the end shot by Robert Stacey McCain. The main point of his post is true: one reason Republicans get bad press is that they are incompetent at dealing with reporters.
I'm looking at a list of McCain campaign staffers, and I see 15 names listed under "communications": Jill Hazelbaker, Brooke Buchanan, Brian Rogers, Michael Goldfarb, Jeff Sadosky, Crystal Benton, Andrea Saul, Charlie Adams, Brittany Brammell, Tucker Bounds, Ben Porritt, Nicole Wallace, Matt MacDonald, Taylor Griffin, and Matthew Scully.
Which one of these people was responsible for dealing with the US magazine staff? If the task of the communications department is to get good publicity for the campaign, who gets fired when the publicity is bad? Nobody.
There's no accountability, see? Tucker Bounds goes on CNN and makes an idiot of himself and, instead of firing Tucker Bounds, the McCain campaign's response is to cancel the candidate's appearance on "Larry King Live."
He's right in that Republicans tend to project their own distrust of reporters on to the reporters themselves. Look, reporters are paid to uncover dirt. That's not to say that liberal reporters don't enjoy sticking the knife in and twisting it, but you can change the odds quite a bit if you learn to handle reporters with a little respect as opposed to constantly assuming they are jerks.
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