Media Confesses Crush on Obama

Did you see the continued campaign marketing engine of Barack Obama chugging down the track? Barack Obama's Madison Avenue minions, via the south side of Chicago, made up a designated plaque just for him. No, not the bogus Presidential Seal used previously by the campaign until folks said, hey, wait a minute. That is certainly not an act of dignified gravitas. Now, maybe someone should remind Obama's people that there is no office of "President-Elect." Sure, it's his designation until the big day for him in January. However, just because you are the first one with an ego large enough to stand behind a podium declaring the office, doesn't mean there is any such office.

Time to get a grip.

It almost looked like something right out of tv land, didn't it? Obama and all his solemn looking white guy and gal advisers on stage. Flanked by Joe Biden on one side and diminutive Rahm Emanuel on the other, trying to keep up the brainwashing of America. Tacky, tacky.

It's interesting that the Washington Post decided to come clean on the non-professional reporting bias on the candidate of choice, Senator Obama. Deborah Howell and her assistant, Jean Hwang, examined coverage from Nov. 11, 2007 through the election. Surprise, surprise. The Post coverage ran far more favorable stories and photos of Obama and his family. And, of course, the newspaper endorsed the candidate, too.

From an article by Howell on Sunday, November 9, 2008 on washingtonpost.com:

Howell said, "But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager."

"One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right: it was a serious omission." You think?

Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, at Pajamas Media, wrote of the interview of Newsweek editors "worrying about Obama's contortions". "For months most assured us that worries about the plastic Obama were illiberal, then they got what they wanted and now confess to us what they themselves knew all along, that there could be no there there." Again, you think?

"Like many, I wrote some pre-election essays with titles like 'The Obama Enigma' and 'The Blank Slate' and got the usual tons of hate mail that most now get from the organized Obama electronic minutemen, but is the media party line really now to be "We also knew all that the, but can only say it now"?

Michael S. Malone, writer at edgelings, a tech business on-line newsletter, wrote recently of a conversation he had with his two fellow writers in the newsletter venture: "Needless to say, it being election season, the conversation often turned to politics - a touchy subject, as one of my partners was an Obama supporter, the other was for McCain. For my part, I try not to talk about politics. But one morning I found myself interjecting, "Well, one thing we can agree on is that the mainstream media is more one-sided and biased than we've ever seen it. I'm ashamed of my profession right now."

"I had never really verbalized that before, but it had certainly been on my mind, especially after perusing the most recent issue of Newsweek, a magazine I'd read since childhood, but which was now so obviously in the tank for Sen. Obama that I swore, on ethical reasons alone, to never read it again." Join the club. None of the weekly "news magazines" are trustworthy.

Malone wrote of his experience after writing his column on ABCNews.com on the subject and how "all hell broke loose." His article at Pajamas Media is of his first hand experience at the power of the blogosphere and the "enduring cultural strength of the traditional media." Though he had media interview requests galore, he only did two radio interviews. One was for a Denver station and the other with Lou Dobbs, who was even more incensed than Malone over the coverage of Obama. Malone was surprised to note that interview requests from traditional media came through the ABC News venue and even from his last book's publisher but not from traditional media reading the blogosphere.

Then his story took on a life of its own after exposure on Drudge. He was grateful that the column, in the end, encouraged a national debate. "And I noted, with great satisfaction, that in the last twenty four hours of the campaign, the media - embarrassed at last - seemed to try a little harder to balance its reporting ... only to backslide (as noted even by Tom Shales) on election night."

"So, what did I learn from this experience? That it is possible in this new cyber-world to be a lone writer sitting at this laptop in suburbia and write something that actually changes the course of events and, momentary at least, sets the national debate. I also learned that the raw power - and the ability to mobilize people - of the Web and the blogosphere is both immense and growing fast. But legitimacy is still conferred by the traditional media - which makes their duty to be fair and unbiased even greater."

Too bad the reading public has lost faith in media's self-corrective abilities. Maybe the dwindling readerships of newspapers and magazines will speak to the decision makers. Eventually.