The Media and Obama: “The Story They Wanted to Tell”
I was watching Morning Joe today on MSNBC and heard Joe Scarborough make a rather remarkable comment concerning the media coverage of the Obama campaign going back to 2007.
“All through this campaign, Barack Obama was the story the media wanted to tell. And if you ran against Obama, whether you were [Hillary] Clinton or John McCain, they were going to tear you to pieces.“
This was particularly noteworthy coming as it did on that particular network. One recent study in Variety revealed that MSNBC led the pack in apparent bias for election coverage, with 73% of their stories about McCain being rated as negative, compared to 57% negative stories on McCain in the other networks on average. Most of these networks also love to feature clips from the Daily Show and the late night programs such as Letterman and Leno. They do this in the spirit of “injecting some humor” into the campaign coverage, but the folks who did this study at the University of Delaware also noted that the jokes poking fun at McCain vastly outnumbered the digs taken at Obama.
So what do you think? I make a point of watching several sources each day: Morning Joe, Fox and Friends, and CNN Headline News. Except for Fox, I must admit that the coverage has really been telling the story as Scarborough described. Obama’s detractors have chaffed at the perceived lack of coverage on stories involving William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and other “questionable” associates of Barack Obama. Truth be told, I have seen these stories mentioned on MSNBC, but they are almost always couched in catch phrases, such as, “why anyone would care about this…” and it gets brushed aside. (Personally, I agree with them and don’t care much about those stories, but it is news, so you’d expect them to cover it in a more even handed fashion.)
And so I ask you, ladies and gentlemen. Did the media, in large part, decide that this was the story they wanted to tell back in 2007? Did they actively and knowing seek to “tear to pieces” Hillary Clinton and John McCain? Particularly for the Obama supporters here, please note that I’m not asking you to change sides, or say that Obama is horrible or any such thing. You are free to agree with the story being told and agree with the portrayal as you wish. But when you watch this endless coverage, I’m just wondering if you ever felt a small twinge of embarrassment or discomfort at the fawning going on over this candidate?
Was Barack Obama the story they wanted to tell? And did they wind up injecting themselves into the plot line to make sure the story stayed on script? Let us know what you think.
65 Responses to “The Media and Obama: “The Story They Wanted to Tell””
Typical Liberal crap.
Oooh, he disagrees with me, he doesn't worship the same sources I do, he was rude to me in my stupidity, and said something I interpret as violating the comment policy (although it didn't. Again, your oinability to read what is there, rather than whwat you THINK is ther, blinds you. I made no threat, nor used profanity. I only implied profanity).
He must be a stalker, and potentially violent! He might even be crazy!
Glad you won't be reading this, I would hate to scare you further with my disagreement with you, and have you try to get a restraining order or something.
Why don't you go take a Zoloft, and calm down.
SB – I do not think Obama is a closet terrorist, and am not stupid enough to get sucked down your rat whole. The question is a) why is he so downplaying their long-term relationship and b) what does his Ayers relationship, taken within the totality of his other close ties to people like Rev. Wright, Khalidi, etc., say about some of his core beliefs?
He seems to have a long list of friends and associates with very radical views towards America. He has stated that he likes to have multiple viewpoints as the reason, but there seems to be a very real scarcity of of any balance in the types of people he looked to when young. By his own admission, he sought out Left wing activists and Marxist professors in his early academic career. Again, nothing unusual for a young intellectual. It is the constant attempts to pretend that these are not important figures in his life and adult development that make me nervous.
CStanley hit the nail on the head. I remember when Bush got taken to task for weeks in the press for just giving a speech at Bob Jones during the 200 elections. But decades-long associations with Ayers and Rev. Wright, etc., should not even be discussed in polite company.
Lively discussion here.
Bringing it back to the original post, I'd say that removing bias or unfairness from news is an impossible task. I can never quite decide if it's worth the effort, because often times, attempts at being unbiased introduce a bias all their own.
Like CNN's Campbell Brown is fond of saying lately, if politician A tells you it's raining outside, and politician B tells you it's dry and sunny, you can't just report both statements and wash your hands of it.
Journalists can and should provide context and fact-checking for the claims made by the people they report on, otherwise we might as well dismantle news organizations and just get our news directly from campaign press releases.
So what, do I think about this election? Well, I think Obama has received far better coverage than Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry could have dreamed of. That could be for any number of reasons, the historic nature of his candidacy, his charisma, the level of enthusiasm he's created in the country, disaffection with the Republican party.
But I don't think it comes simply down to liberal bias. We have roughly the same press we had in 2004 and 2000, and yet the coverage in those elections were incredibly hostile to the so-called “liberal” candidates.
I know I see McCain's campaign through my own biased lens, but I think there have been a number of simply absurd moves on his part that can't simply be spun away by media attempts to be even-handed. The non-suspension suspension of the campaign, the Sarah “abused her power, but is a reformist maverick” Palin pick, this Joe “my role model” the Plumber business, the charges of socialism while simultaneously supporting a massive buyout of failed mortgages and banks, the mostly fabricated Khalidi connection that reveals his own deeper financial ties to the man, and on and on.
The campaigns could hardly be more different, so it makes sense that they'd evaluated differently.
AR, thanks. I don't think Obama and Ayers working together on an education project and then Ayers hosting a coffee get together for Obama when Obama ran for public office qualifies as a close relationship.
Obama can't downplay a close relationship that was never there.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied…
I agree with almost all of your comment Chris, except of course the criticism of McCain's campaiging. Well, that's not to say that I think he's run a great campaign- he certainly could have done better. But the types of things you are criticizing are all part and parcel of the media narrative and on the whole, not worse than things I could name about Obama's campaigning such as:
1. Flip flopping on his pledge for public financing AND falling way short of his promises regarding transparency of donations (he's gotten a larger share of his donations from large donors than we've been led to believe, and has done less toward transparency than has McCain.)
2. Incoherent adjustments to policy that make it impossible to know where he really stands on certain issues like free trade
3. Criticizing McCain for his campaign suspension because he said that would insert presidential politics into the economic bailout- and then he proceeds to take credit for the bailout package and let the Congressional Dems insert presidential politics by slamming McCain.
4. Picking Joe Biden, an obvious move to placate people who don't feel he has the experience and gravitas on foreign policy (yet somehow he's not criticized for this by those who believed that Obama's judgement on Iraq was correct.)
5. Constantly criticizing McCain for running a negative campaign when he was the one who went negative first (with the dishonest use of '100 years in Iraq' taken out of context) and has distorted in other ads (fearmongering seniors on SS) and has run more negative ads overall than has McCain.
I could go on but you get the idea. These negative campaign features haven't hurt Obama as McCain's negatives have hurt him- so I say that's mainly because of the wind at Obama's back and the headwind that McCain has to fight. And that's before you even get into the money advantage.
I don't want to make excuses, as McCain clearly could have done some things better. But if the results come out even close, then I think McCain has done incredibly well given the conditions he's had to operate under.
CStanley,
I appreciate where your coming from, but I think there is qualitative difference between the campaigns that's hard to ignore. Taking each of the examples you've brought out, I can bring up a worse example of a similar sort on McCain's side:
1. Running roughshod over campaign finance laws he helped draft in the primaries. Claiming that Obama “promised” to take public financing when Obama had always left himself a loophole in his rhetoric. Remember, he said he'd like to seek an agreement, rather than he definitely would.
2. Incoherent adjustments to policy that make it impossible to know where he really stands on certain issues like taxes, deregulation, withdrawal from Iraq, bailouts.
3. Saying he was going to suspend his campaign and yet doing no such thing. Criticizing Obama for supporting socialism after voting for the government takeover of a large part of the financial industry.
4. Picking power-abuser and lightweight Palin after meeting her once, and previously pledging that his VP pick would be based on immediate readiness for the presidency
5. Running advertisements that dwarf the negativity of Obama's by painting a picture of Obama as a celebrity, traitor-terrorist socialist who will raise your taxes (even though he won't for 95% of people) and so on.
Holy cow! I wrote this some time back during the Clinton administration and you guys are still going!
[...] Friday, Jazz Shaw of TMV asked if Barack Obama was the story the media wanted to tell and did they inject themselves into the plot to keep the story on [...]
Well- AR- the terrorist's best friend is now your new president
-elect. That is a fitting way to end this argument. Maybe you
conservatives can regroup and then regurgitate the same crap that the
voters have been rejecting for the last 2 elections!
Wow, and that response only took you 5 days to come up with! OK, maybe 2 days since the election.
Still, quite an amazing display of your rapier-like wit and repartee. Given another week or two, you might even have managed to have been cogent.
Well, I had a good reason for the delay, my friend. I was down in
Richmond working to elect the first Muslim
terrorist/anarchist/Communist/socialist-in chief so pardon me if I
didn't respond earlier to your urgent email! Obama/Biden 2012!
You forgot to add non-US citizen to your list!
Seriously though, I am ready to stop this silly tit-for-tat between us. Politics causes strong emotional reactions, and both of us have certainly displayed them during this election cycle.
But the election is over, and it is time to move forward. I do congratulate all who supported Obama, and especially those such as yourself who personally got involved. For any offense I have caused you, both intentionally and unintentionally, I apologize.
If you have read any of my post-election comments, you know I have been very clear that whatever policy differences exist between myself and Obama, you will not find me out there saying anything other than he is our new President, and all of us owe him our respect and support. As time goes on, I am sure there will be objections from me to particular proposals, but I will not be part of any reverse-BDS.
All in good fun-AR- ok I admit to occasional cyberimmaturity and may
sometimes be a tad argumentative.
No apology is necessary–but it was gracious of you to offer one
anyway. In the end I just couldn't see the US electing a VP who didn't
know that Africa was a continent, and so got involved at the bitter
end. KR
Hey, no argument there from me. You can't find one post or comment from me where I say anything other than she was a stupid and destructive pick. I may have defender her against unfair attacks (like the daughter/granddaughter crap), but I am no fan of hers, or the far-Right portion of the Republican Party she represents.
Here is a related thought though. Who will be on the ticket with Obama in 2012? Still Biden? He would turn 70 right after the election, and would be 74 by the end of a second term. As age was a major factor against McCain (according to exit polls), you do have to wonder if he would pick someone else. The Democrats as a party would like to use that slot to tee up a potential successor, I would expect.
If age is a problem Obama might replace Biden with Va Gov Caine or
Sen. Mark Warner. Biden doesn't want to seek the presidency again.
I'm more interested in seeing if the GOP will pick a moderate or a
far right firebrand. I hope I've seen the last of the lovely Ms.
Palin, but you never know……..