Many Republicans say the media are biased against them. Press photographers at a campaign stop in February.

MARK LEIBOVICH ESSAY

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
The Republicans, returning to a familiar theme, have been loudly criticizing the “mainstream,”“elite,”“establishment,”“left wing,”“Washington insider”news media. Given the amount of time they’re devoting to the subject, it’s worth asking how much the exercise will really advance the party’s cause.
“It’s a very unifying thing in the world of the Republican base,” said Mike Murphy, the Republican media strategist and a former top aide to the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. “But I doubt there’s any swing voter outside Cleveland who would think the big problem in this country these days is media bias against Republicans.”
The latest to join the attack was Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential choice. Her speech at the Republican National Convention was judged an unqualified success by the media elite, even though much of it was aimed at the media elite.
“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” Ms. Palin said to wild applause.
She capped a succession of convention speakers - the unsuccessful Republican contenders Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee - who took turns pummeling their favorite target, the news media, which in turn gave the news media the chance to talk about its favorite subject (the news media).
Kevin Madden, a former aide to Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign, said attacking the media was “a tactic, not a message,” and not the kind of tactic that could swing an election.
It wasn’t enough to get Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole elected in 1964 and 1996 and George H. W. Bush re-elected in 1992. They were three of the noisiest in their complaints about bias.
The Republican tradition of mediabashing goes back at least to the convention of 1964, when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower attacked “sensation- seeking columnists and commentators.
The sentiment was immortalized by Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, who charged that many in the press were mere “nattering nabobs of negativism” and, for good measure, “an effete corps of impudent snobs.”
In other words, the bashers and bashees have been through this and know how it works. Still, despite its familiarity, the media-mashing game has changed considerably over the years, just as the media have.
For starters, it would be wrong to dismiss the events of convention week - particularly the media storm around Ms. Palin and her family, justified or not - as fleeting hysteria. This was an unusual circumstance, perhaps the first real convention controversy to unfold in the age of real-time blogging, YouTube, Twittering, or whatever it is they’re calling this age nowadays. It seemed as if no detail of these proceedings was deemed too trivial for dissemination, somewhere.
Nor should the current blitz against the news media from the right be dismissed as glib and tired lines from the old Republican playbook.
“The mainstream media, which has been holding endless symposia here on the future of media in the 21st century, is in danger of missing a central fact of that future,” wrote Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. “If they appear, once again, as they have in the past, to be people not reporting the battle but engaged in the battle, if they allow themselves to be tagged by that old tag, which so tarnished them in the past, they will do more to imperil their own future than the Internet has.”
Senator McCain provides an interesting test case. He has benefited greatly over the years from friendly relations with - and coverage from - the press. This year, however, he presided over the most media-hostile convention in recent memory (though he did not join in himself in his acceptance speech). His campaign seems to be running against “media bias” to burnish the reformer credentials of Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin.
Despite the hot words from the convention podium, it was hard to find a journalist who felt any unusual sense of discomfort.
Tom Brokaw of the NBC television network was in the Xcel Energy Center on September 3 when Ms. Palin was ripping the media, and the hall ignited into a chant of “NBC, NBC, NBC” that started in the Alaska delegation and spread through adjacent sections. He said he was subjected to some “good-natured ribbing, friendly fist-shaking,” in the convention hall, but “nothing out of the ordinary.” or, for that matter, nothing that would impede him from discharging his normal celebrity duties.
“If the number of people who wanted their picture taken with me was any indication, it wasn’t a big deal,” Mr. Brokaw said.
During the convention, Karl Rove, the former Bush political lieutenant and now a Fox News commentator, was asked by a reporter whether he could still bash the media since he is now in the media. “I’m not in it,” he said. “I’m around it.”
It’s not clear what the distinction is, or what he meant, but somehow it felt emblematic of the week in St. Paul.