Eleven seconds. That’s how long the exchange lasted between Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and Miami Herald political reporter Marc Caputo during a campaign swing through South Florida last week.
During a multi-city visit that took Cain to a senior center in Sweetwater, Miami’s Little Havana, Coral Springs, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, the most newsworthy moment, judging by the resulting press coverage, occurred in those 11 seconds.
While in Sweetwater walking toward the senior center, Caputo, his video camera aimed at Cain, said to the candidate, “I want to ask you about, do you mind, about Cuba, about your Cuba policy, what you think about the wet-foot, dry-foot policy?”
Cain, looking and sounding puzzled, answered, “The wet-foot, dry-foot policy?”
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[W]hile the Florida media did a good job of capturing the entirety of Cain’s Florida trip, media outside the state often took the easy way out: grabbing the tidbit about speaking “Cuban” and/or the “wet-foot, dry-foot” exchanges, both of which served to confirm the (again, not unfounded) media narrative that Candidate Cain does not have a good grasp of things foreign policy. That became the story —We’ve confirmed our hunch, again! Our work here is done. The episode may have revealed something about Cain, but the way it was covered revealed as much about the media. In the process, voters’ voices went missing.
In fact, the campaign media missed an opportunity to explore and explain a unique immigration policy that is aimed at a single country, an issue that remains important to a significant bloc of Florida voters.
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One final note about how the coverage reflected the media’s parochial concerns and professional imperatives. The footage of Cain’s ducking of the “wet-foot, dry-foot” question came out during a morning campaign stop–perfectly timed to provide the storyline for the day. How many of the journalists who seized on it came back to pick up a later interview with WPLG’s Putney aboard the campaign bus, when Cain finally had an answer?
Full story here.