For the sin of being forthright about John McCain over the course of this election, Joe Klein has been banned from traveling with the McCain campaign. For awhile, the McCain campaign was trying to make this all look like a zany miscommunication. “My understanding is that his request came in too late,” said Palin spokesperson Tracey Schmitt. See? They're not vindictive. Just incompetent. But Michael Goldfarb sort of gave up the game today when he told The Politico's Michael Calderone "we don't allow Daily Kos diarists on board either." (You ever get the feeling that folks on the McCain campaign really regret the Goldfarb hire?) First: How does Goldfarb know there are no DailyKos diarists on the plane? Many DailyKos diarists are anonymous. They could be anywhere! They are everywhere! Even...behind...you. Ahem. Second, this is a pretty good example of the perverse consequences of doing good political journalism. In general, political reporting requires access. But access is not a statutory right. It's offered at the discretion of the campaign. And it can be revoked for "bad behavior." Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story from their chief medical correspondent that noted the McCain campaign's response when they asked for medical records. "Jill Hazelbaker, a McCain spokeswoman, denied the requests, writing in an e-mail message that The Times was 'not at the top of the list' and including a link to a Times editorial that had criticized Mr. McCain for not disclosing health information and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for not disclosing financial records." And then the paper has a choice: Even if you can't do really good reporting with access, you can't really do any reporting without access. And if you can't do any reporting, readers will go elsewhere, to more pliant, less independent, papers. And wouldn't that be worse for them? So isn't it better that you make some concessions in order to retain your plane seat? Or that you pull the reporter they hate off the trail and put her on another beat? Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good? It's sort of a collective action problem for the media, wherein you could imagine the papers getting together and setting down some rules for this sort of thing, but outlets like The Washington Times and Fox News would simply decline to participate and then eke out a competitive advantage. This is all part of what happens when a democracy subcontracts its information function to a for-profit industry.
