The Political Whore

Local media got in on a select few one-on-one interviews with Barack Obama today. Some did well; some, not so much:

Newschannel 8 anchor Keith Cate: He gets off to a bad start using the term “disenfranchised” in his first question about Florida’s delegate issue, a loaded word that is straight out of the Clinton campaign but that does get a rise out of Obama. His question about a possible role for Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio in an Obama administration is a bit ridiculous, given Iorio’s late-to-the-party endorsement today. And three questions about the delegate issue? On the upside, as with all the TV interviews done yesterday, raw video is posted in its entirety, and Cate does get a rise out of Obama right off the start. Grade=C+

St. Petersburg Times’ Adam C. Smith: We got only a preview of Smith’s one-on-one in The Buzz blog last night, but the full interview this AM shows Smith gets more out of Obama on the delegate issue than Cate:

Does the popular vote in Florida count for anything, we asked Sen. Barack Obama on the ride from Tampa to Orlando: “Look, I think it’s fair to say that in all these races if I didn’t campaign at all and this had just been a referendum on name recognition, Sen. Clinton would be the nominee. That’s true in Iowa, that’s true in practically every state we’ve won. It’s pretty hard to make an argument that somehow you winning what is essentially a name recognition contest in Florida was a good measure of electoral strength there. It”s even tougher to make that argument in Michigan where my name wasn’t even on the ballot.

Obama even goes so far as to say he would support seating half the Florida delegation. The story dwells too long on the delegate issue and summarizes other issues in bullets that pretty much follow the paper’s editorial from the day before. The Times posted audio of the interview, although it is poor sound quality. How about a full transcript? Grade=A-

The Tampa Tribune’s William March: Not much made it onto the website yesterday, only this snippet at the end of his blog post about the speech, which March termed a “standard stump speech:”

“All I did was play exactly by the rules that were laid out for me,” he said in an interview afterward.

And the next day wasn’t much better as tbo.com featured Cate’s lukewarm interview instead of March’s one-on-one. March’s interview was folded into the larger speech coverage story, with excerpts like this surfacing only occassionally:

“I will do what is required to win Florida,” he said in an interview on his campaign bus after the Tampa event. “That’s why we’re here for three days, and we’re going to be here a lot more days.”

No video, no transcript, no separate story. I don’t blame the reporter; clearly the bias at the News Center was to put the high-profile anchor up front. So much for Media General’s argument that convergence will produce better information for the public. Grade=D (Combined grade for Newschannel 8-Trib converged one-on-one coverage=C)

Tampa Bay’s 10 Mario Diaz: I was fully prepared not to like this interview, posted raw and in its entirety, since Diaz didn’t do much to distinguish himself as the morning show host and has been off that show and largely off the air for months as his contract runs its course. The fact that he started off with some softballs didn’t help. But his format of asking viewer-submission questions actually worked pretty well, except for the fact that he never presses Obama for further details and wedges in so many questions that none of the answers go much below the surface. And what the hell is that strange moaning from off-camera in the middle of the interview that distracted Obama?? Grade=B-

ABC Action News’ Brendan McLaughlin: Like Newschannel 8, the ABC affiliates sends its top anchor in to do the job. My disclaimer right up front: I appear frequently on McLaughlin’s Flashpoint and count him as a friend. His interview starts very informally as both men talk about how their father and grandfather both served in World War II and could “have slogged through the mud together.” The formal questions have only just started when the momentum is broken by Obama’s getting “a frog in my throat” and calling for some bottled water (environmentalist alert!) and joking “ribbit.” McLaughlin then hits Obama squarely with a McCain assertion that Obama is soft on communism in Cuba. McLaughlin is one of the better interviewers in the area and shows his chops in this session, and he only stumbles once, losing his train of thought after a question about oil drilling of Florida’s Gulf coast. I especially liked the way he asked the requisite Hillary question. My biggest complaint is that the full interview is posted in parts on the station’s website and is hard to find. Grade=B (loses points for bad presentation online with ads separating sections of the interview and the interview end being cut off’; use the scrolling menu just below the video player on the right of the home page to find the raw interview footage)

Fox 13: Doesn’t look like the station did a one-on-one. Grade=F

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