The media provides covering fire for Obama - Political Forum

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · #1 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 09:06 PM

I thought this was a pretty funny piece and it made me laugh.

Obama's secret weapon: The media - John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei - Politico.com

Quote:

Obama's secret weapon: The media
By JOHN F. HARRIS & JIM VANDEHEI | 4/18/08 7:05 PM EST

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance? Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining. The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.

Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions — a mix of fair and impertinent — he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters. But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.

The response was itself a warning about a huge challenge for reporters in the 2008 cycle: preserving professional detachment in a race that will likely feature two nominees, Obama and John McCain, who so far have been beneficiaries of media cheerleading.

.....

Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything, they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee.

If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

(Harris only here: As one who has assigned journalists to cover Obama at both Politico and The Washington Post, I have witnessed the phenomenon several times. Some reporters come back and need to go through detox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)

(VandeHei only here: There is no doubt reporters are smitten with Obama's speeches and promises to change politics. I find his speeches, when he's on, pretty electric myself. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)
...

I think the ABC debate was fair enough. In fact, I think Obama's responses to several questions were quite poor from an objective point of view. He did not answer the question about what he heard of Rev. Wright that made Obama pull his invitation to Wright to speak at his 2007 announcement. He didn't answer what his relationship with Ayers was. Obama needs to start handling those kinds of questions like a pro. It was his failure in answering that made it a debacle, not necessarily the questions themselves.

As to the greater question of media bias, I'd say the media is in the tank for Obama, and they should be. Fuck Hillary Clinton. She's the lowest class of politician and people should be in the tank against her.

WEB

notahack · #2 (**permalink**) 04-22-2008, 08:28 AM

reporters are supposed to say

who, what, when, where and how. However, not too long ago, ratings became paramount and reporters became entertainers and crossed over to the side of editorial style reporting. Print, broadcast and on line media aren't about to put a disclaimer on each story that it contains some % of opinion and not just facts.

Oprahma is charismatic while HillBilly is a slug and McCain is asleep. Oprahma shows nicely on TV while HillBilly seems to be packing on the weight. It's entertainment baby and Oprahma looks good so it's an easy move to lean toward him.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary · #3 (**permalink**) 04-22-2008, 08:41 AM

Isn't that what the Fox News revolution was about? All those tell the news guys got thrown out of the window, since they could not compete with opinion segments like O'Reilly and Hannity and Colmes? All the cable news shows (MSNBC and CNN) followed suit after that. What I'm saying is that as far as cable news is concerned, it seems that Americans wanted someone to tell them their opinion on the news.

JoeBlack · #4 (**permalink**) 04-22-2008, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.E.B. Du Bois

I thought this was a pretty funny piece and it made me laugh.

Obama's secret weapon: The media - John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei - Politico.com

I think the ABC debate was fair enough. In fact, I think Obama's responses to several questions were quite poor from an objective point of view. He did not answer the question about what he heard of Rev. Wright that made Obama pull his invitation to Wright to speak at his 2007 announcement. He didn't answer what his relationship with Ayers was. Obama needs to start handling those kinds of questions like a pro. It was his failure in answering that made it a debacle, not necessarily the questions themselves.

As to the greater question of media bias, I'd say the media is in the tank for Obama, and they should be. Fuck Hillary Clinton. She's the lowest class of politician and people should be in the tank against her.

WEB

they gang tackled Obama. A good ol fashioned lynchin' but hey that's the game in politics. I liked how obama dusted the dirt of his shoulders. Then all the conservatives commentators , O'liely, Coulter-geist-calamity er hannity, et. all said he was whining. bs!

shake the haters off Obama!

BullMoose · #5 (**permalink**) 04-25-2008, 01:57 AM

I've noticed MSNBC has a really strong pro-Obama bias. Olbermann is the most noticeable example of this--his interview with Hillary was fine, but he immediately resorted to twisting her words in a post-interview analysis.

This seems to me quite wrong. I'm pretty sick of newscasters being so partisan (both liberal and conservative)--let the guests be as they are, but the newsman should try to be as objective as possible. What bothers me about Olbermann, too, is that he tries to claim he has no bias--the same claim O'Reilly makes.