Lazy Reporters
Mar 1st, 2008 at 9:15 am by Susie
See, now this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. When the media decides to give a candidate an easy ride, it’s not as if it happens on an intellectual level - it’s emotional. And then they come up with an intellectual rationalization for their emotional decision:
On the bus ferrying a group of reporters to an appearance by Senator Barack Obama at Ohio State University on Wednesday, Lee Cowan, the NBC reporter assigned to the campaign, was asked the media question of the week: Had journalists like himself been going easier on Mr. Obama than his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?
“I don’t think that it’s kind treatment versus unkind treatment,” Mr. Cowan began, taking issue with the depiction of journalists fawning over Mr. Obama in a “Saturday Night Live” skit last Saturday, a characterization stoked nearly every day since by Mrs. Clinton and her aides.
And yet, Mr. Cowan then described several advantages that he saw Mr. Obama as having over his rival. “He hasn’t been around as long, so there isn’t as much to pick at,” Mr. Cowan said. “He plays everything very cool. He’s not as much of a lightning rod. His personality just doesn’t seem to draw that kind of coverage.”
“Even in the conversations we have as colleagues, there is a sense of trying especially hard not to drink the Kool-Aid,” Mr. Cowan added. “It’s so rapturous, everything around him. All these huge rallies.”
Got that? He “plays everything very cool,” which the nerds on the press bus find appealing. Obama “doesn’t have the kind of personality to draw that kind of coverage”!
And what kind of personality is that, pray tell? Just think about that. A network reporter just said “If someone doesn’t rub me the wrong way, he’s going to get a free ride.”
Must everything to do with the press corps be reduced to junior-high rules?
“He hasn’t been around as long, so there isn’t as much to pick at.” Now see, I was the kind of reporter who’d say, “This guy hasn’t been around that long, so I can look at everything.”
This is the same sort of idiotic “personality politics” that has led to the corrupt John McCain getting a reputation of sainthood. Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps?
Shouldn’t it properly be, “Senator Obama” and “Senator Clinton” always?
The assertions of media bias against Senator Clinton are as accurate as her description of her career as consisting of “35 years” of experience. If you interpret the facts very selectively, it is possible to arrive at the conclusion, although any rational individual will retain a sort of creeping guilt at having deliberately misconstrued the facts.
“The media” is not biased against Senator Clinton. There are some reporters who do not like her, and some who do not like Senator Obama, but they strive to be objective unless they’re editorializing. Nobody’s perfect, but there is no “Anti-Hillary HQ” where reporters from major networks have to take courses on how to tear her down. The media bias charge is a calculated tactic, part of the last-ditch effort to reverse Obama’s momentum; please don’t get gulled into believing it.
The press have indeed given Obama a free ride, and the idea that there is no bias in the media coverage of the candidates is ludicrous. The bias is in the degree of coverage, the time of coverage, the number of pictures, the types of pictures, and the list goes on. The press gave a free pass to Bush and got him into office (twice!!!), allowed the Iraq war to happen without question, and is now trying to get Obama into office. Obama used the press to accuse the Clinton’s of racism in South Carolina just becaus they spoke the truth - shame on the press and shame on Obama. Obama is unaccomplished and a cheat because he takes credit for things that he did not do. The press need to BE OBJECTIVE!!!!
The press is not biased against Hillary Clinton??? Surely you jest - or you never watch Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Brian Williams, Keith Olberman, Tucker Carlson, Carl Bernstein, Gloria Berger . . . and I can’t even remember all the names. Did you watch the gang-bang debate back in October, moderated by Russert/Williams, in which the whole purpose was to get the other eight or so candidates on stage to kill the pig and spill her blood, and only Richardson objected to the indecency of it all? Nor do you ever read Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, etc.
Or how about the press helping to push Obama’s slander that every criticism from Clinton or anyone who supports Clinton is racist (that’s what the Clintons get for supporting the African American community for all those years); or the fact that Obama is never questioned on any of his assertions on Nafta, lobbyist/corporate contributions, Rezko, and the list goes on and on.
You’d have to be deaf dumb and blind to think that the press doesn’t want to drive a stake through her heart once and for all, and they are using Obama, in part, as a surrogate to do just that.
“You’d have to be deaf dumb and blind to think that the press doesn’t want to drive a stake through her heart once and for all, and they are using Obama, in part, as a surrogate to do just that.”
Your factual rebuttal has swayed me!!!!
Thank-you, now I can use this hammer of truth to convince others of the vast conspiracy!!! Excelsior!