In less than two months since entering the 2012 race, Bachmann’s campaign staff has become embroiled in at least five unusually hostile encounters with the traveling media marked by pushing, shoving and, in one instance, the allegation of a threat of violence to a reporter.
Some of it has unfolded in full public view: Bachmann aides’ tussles with the press have twice turned into news stories, once when veteran ABC News reporter Brian Ross was shoved and pushed by Bachmann staffers in South Carolina and on a second occasion when Bachmann’s husband and two staffers pushed CNN’s Don Lemon into a cart, producing a furious on-air complaint.
In another incident that did not make the air, a camera captured Fox News correspondent Steve Brown telling a bodyguard in Iowa, “Do not put your hands on me. Don’t ever do it again.”
A foreign reporter also alleged to POLITICO this week that an aide threatened to break his arm — an allegation the Bachmann campaign denied.
The point is not the violence, real or implied, but the fact that the notion of Beat The Press here is A) beneficial to Bachmann as Tea Party red meat ("the liberal media is the enemy and should be treated as such") and B) also beneficial to Villagers like Ben Smith ("we're kind of important, dammit!"). Stories like this are in fact mutually beneficial to both sides, so you can expect Bachmann's staff to continue to act like goons towards the press because the it makes the press into the story, and the press really, really loves that.
In other words, it's professional wrestling, only with suits. All fake. All for drama and numbers. Ben Smith knows damn well this story will encourage Bachmann staffers to pick fights, and will also encourage Villagers to in turn pick fights with Bachmann. Quite the incestuous relationship.
This is the Village's idea of "adversarial press" and I don't believe it for a second.
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