Slicing and Dicing a Newspaper

When the Sacramento Bee's Bobby Caina Calvan went to Iraq, he got into a confrontation with a U.S.soldier manning a checkpoint -- and wrote on his personal blog about his attempt to "bully" the soldier. After Calvan drew criticism in cyberspace, McClatchy Newspapers, which includes the Bee, banned all personal blogs by its journalists. "We don't want to be surprised again," McClatchy Managing Editor Mark Seibel told the Bee.

Jewel of a Question

The University of Nevada student who closed last week's Democratic debate by asking Hillary Clinton whether she liked "diamonds or pearls" is complaining that her question was "pre-planned" and her preferred question "censored" by CNN.

"See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted," Maria Luisa wrote on her MySpace page.

David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief, who produced the debate, dismisses the charge as "absurd" and "totally untrue." He says the jewelry query was on a list Luisa had submitted and producers nixed her first choice, on nuclear waste storage in Nevada, because the candidates had already discussed the topic. "That was the question this woman wanted to ask. . . . After two hours of somewhat intense arguing, a gentle ending is not the worst thing," he says.

Bohrman did not dispute complaints of imbalance in CNN's post-debate analysis, including James Carville, who was identified only as a "former Bill Clinton adviser" and CNN contributor. Carville, who has contributed to the New York senator and signed a fundraising letter for her, "is clearly identified with [Hillary] Clinton," Bohrman says. The other guests were David Gergen, a former Clinton White House aide (who also worked for three Republican presidents), and former GOP congressman J.C. Watts. Bohrman says CNN needs "to take extra care to make sure we have balance. . . . We'll remember that one next time."

Furthermore . . .

Some more Hillary debate reviews are still bouncing around. Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum seems bored:

"Well, the best political team on television (or whatever they call themselves) seems hellbent on agreeing that Hillary is back! Obama just couldn't bring the fire again.

"My take is that this just goes to show how starved everyone is for something to talk about. Frankly, Hillary's 'stumbles' in the last debate were pretty minor, and there was never any reason to think that she wouldn't be back to her old self this time around. Ditto for Obama, who did about as well as he usually does -- namely OK, but not great. The debate format really doesn't seem to favor him. He does better in speeches than he does in soundbites."

At Slate, John Dickerson also notices how quickly the CW changes:

"Well, that was a short death spiral. Hillary Clinton is back to winning debates, something she'd been doing regularly until two weeks ago when she seemed to put all of her mistakes into one debate performance. In the interim she's been defending herself against question planting and accusations of playing the gender card. Perhaps it was fitting then that one of her strongest moments of the evening was when she was asked about her gender. Stringing together lines she's been testing on the campaign trail she won one of the night's biggest crowd reactions and looked natural and approachable in a back-and-forth with CNN's pregnant questioner Campbell Brown.

"Clinton ran no risk of looking weak by talking about her gender because she was kneeing her opponents in the groin. Two weeks ago Clinton had tried to stay above the fray which made her look evasive and left her opponent's attacks unanswered. No more. For each candidate she had an attack prepared to answer their jabs at her. She said that John Edwards was parroting Republican talking points and slinging mud. She attacked Barack Obama for not proposing universal healthcare, inflating his legitimate policy alternative into a failing lack of will. She also swatted at Obama in a discussion over Social Security when she willfully overestimated the cost of his tax increase to fix the program."

You know what I'd like to see more of? Discussion of the actual issues they were arguing about. Other than one NYT piece, I've seen virtually nothing on Hillary's argument that Obama leaves 15 million Americans uninsured and his contention that the insurance mandate in her plan is unenforceable. And how about Hillary triangulating away from Bill by saying NAFTA was a "mistake"? Almost no one in the media seems to care. It's all about how they delivered their lines on stage.