FREEDOM'S LAST HOPE!

Media Stars Will Accompany Obama Overseas

By JIM RUTENBERG
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the “in other political news” portion of his newscast.

But when Mr. Obama heads for Iraq and other locations overseas this summer, Mr. Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Mr. Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Mr. Obama on successive nights.

And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Mr. Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Mr. Obama’s first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.

The extraordinary coverage of Mr. Obama’s trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.

But the coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

“It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain. “That being said, it certainly hasn’t escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama’s trip next week.”

News executives say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Mr. Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to Mr. McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of his primary battle with Mrs. Clinton, which was at a peak when Mr. McCain last went to Iraq.

The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Mr. Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering Mr. McCain.

As for the heavy coverage planned for Mr. Obama’s upcoming trip, news executives said in interviews that, once again, the Democratic candidate was potentially benefiting from being a newer, untested politician. To that end, his first visit overseas since becoming the party’s presumptive nominee would be an opportunity for voters to see how Mr. Obama handles one of their major concerns: his ability to handle national security matters and foreign affairs.

“If this were John McCain’s first trip to the war zone, that would be a story and we would cover it big time,” said Paul Friedman, the senior vice president of CBS News. “This is Senator Obama’s first trip — his positions and the public’s perception of him on national security issues are important.”

Mr. Friedman said Mr. McCain and the Republicans have helped make the visit a bigger story because they have repeatedly questioned Mr. Obrama’s credentials, keeping a running count of the number of days that have passed since Mr. Obama last visited Iraq, in 2006.

The news industry’s fascination with Mr. Obama has carried over to general-interest magazines, with the candidate landing on considerably more covers in recent months than has Mr. McCain. In the last couple of weeks Mr. Obama has graced the front of Rolling Stone and, for the second time now, that of Us Weekly (both of which are owned by the company of a prominent Obama supporter, Jann S. Wenner).

Beth Jacobson, a spokeswoman for Wenner Media, said they were among the better-selling magazines of the year.

Ned Martel, the deputy editor of Men’s Vogue, said, “He’s what is called in the magazine world an ‘interest driver.’ ” The magazine put Mr. Obama on its cover in 2006 and has recently dispatched the photographer Annie Liebovitz to produce another spread for an upcoming issue. It did do a feature on Mr. McCain in 2006 as well; it did not make the cover.

The race in general has been a ratings boon for cable news outlets. But for the broadcast networks, the contest seems to have, at best, slowed annual declines in viewership.

Chuck Todd, the political director for NBC News, said Mr. Obama’s ability to draw media interest should not be surprising. “This is the way all of the new guys are treated — whether it was Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush,” Mr. Todd said. “There’s always a candidate who gets more ‘new guy’ treatment versus the other one, and it’s not always positive.”

The large news media contingent that will travel with Mr. Obama will be a help if the trip goes wonderfully. But any gaffes will take place before a larger megaphone.

COMMENT:

This evil ALL POWERFUL Enemy Within Private Sector Democracy Undermining Subsidized Media wants you to believe the reason they are going to use Obama's trip overseas to inundate him with favorable press that will reach ALL of the non-Conservative Talk Radio Listening Americans including virtually all of the swing voters is he is the first black candidate and he is new. If this were a politically new black rock solid Conservative running for president they would not be giving him exposure that they didn't give the Democrat candidate.