FrankRep
04-24-2008, 06:00 PM
Media Need "Self-examination" of Bias in Political Coverage
The John Birch Society
April 24, 2008
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Presidential Candidate Barack Obama faced some tough questions from ABC debate moderators that have put the liberal media in an uproar.
Follow this link to the original source: "Obama's secret weapon: the media (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9718.html)"
COMMENTARY:
To date Obama and John McCain have been “beneficiaries of media cheerleading.” Hopefully, that will be coming to an end as the primary season nears its close.
Hillary Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about biased news coverage. “Stop whining” has been the response from the major media.
However, lately it is Obama supporters who are whining. And, as the liberal Politico reports, most of that whining has come from the media, who claim that questions to Obama from ABC moderators at the April 16 debate between Clinton and Obama were unfair.
Since the debate, journalists have been rushing to Obama’s defense, “denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.”
According to John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei who wrote the Politico piece, the media response to the hard questions to Obama suggests that reporters need to be more vigilant in “preserving professional detachment.”
VandeHei commented about covering Obama: “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.”
Harris wrote: “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.”
Harris and VandeHei expressed four main concerns about the way the media have been covering the presidential election:
(1) News organizations have allowed journalists to express their own personal points of view in reporting news. “It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism,” say the Politico writers.
(2) The “liberal echo chamber” now drives news coverage like conservative voices did in the past. Conservatives were successful in keeping alive the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry. Now, liberal commentators and bloggers are doing the same.
(3) Lines are blurring between journalism and advocacy. Many of these advocates, like The Huffington Post, are “proudly cheering for Obama.” Obama benefits also from traditional, old media reporters, who “see Clinton representing bad, angry, contrived old politics and Obama bravely leading the way for good, civil, authentic new politics.”
(4) Reporters fail to recognize the balance between “politics as it is versus as it should be.” While “it is not reporters’ job to promote the opposition’s story lines,” they need to ask tough questions of both candidates.
If Obama is the Democratic nominee in the fall, the elite press will face a dilemma: choosing between two candidates, Obama and McCain, both of whom owe their candidacies to favorable media coverage.
Politico writers Harris and VandeHei have called for a media self-examination. “In the wake of the debate, it is time for Obama’s cheerleaders in the media to ask some questions of themselves.”
I personally doubt that will happen.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/node/7818
The John Birch Society
April 24, 2008
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Presidential Candidate Barack Obama faced some tough questions from ABC debate moderators that have put the liberal media in an uproar.
Follow this link to the original source: "Obama's secret weapon: the media (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9718.html)"
COMMENTARY:
To date Obama and John McCain have been “beneficiaries of media cheerleading.” Hopefully, that will be coming to an end as the primary season nears its close.
Hillary Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about biased news coverage. “Stop whining” has been the response from the major media.
However, lately it is Obama supporters who are whining. And, as the liberal Politico reports, most of that whining has come from the media, who claim that questions to Obama from ABC moderators at the April 16 debate between Clinton and Obama were unfair.
Since the debate, journalists have been rushing to Obama’s defense, “denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.”
According to John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei who wrote the Politico piece, the media response to the hard questions to Obama suggests that reporters need to be more vigilant in “preserving professional detachment.”
VandeHei commented about covering Obama: “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.”
Harris wrote: “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.”
Harris and VandeHei expressed four main concerns about the way the media have been covering the presidential election:
(1) News organizations have allowed journalists to express their own personal points of view in reporting news. “It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism,” say the Politico writers.
(2) The “liberal echo chamber” now drives news coverage like conservative voices did in the past. Conservatives were successful in keeping alive the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry. Now, liberal commentators and bloggers are doing the same.
(3) Lines are blurring between journalism and advocacy. Many of these advocates, like The Huffington Post, are “proudly cheering for Obama.” Obama benefits also from traditional, old media reporters, who “see Clinton representing bad, angry, contrived old politics and Obama bravely leading the way for good, civil, authentic new politics.”
(4) Reporters fail to recognize the balance between “politics as it is versus as it should be.” While “it is not reporters’ job to promote the opposition’s story lines,” they need to ask tough questions of both candidates.
If Obama is the Democratic nominee in the fall, the elite press will face a dilemma: choosing between two candidates, Obama and McCain, both of whom owe their candidacies to favorable media coverage.
Politico writers Harris and VandeHei have called for a media self-examination. “In the wake of the debate, it is time for Obama’s cheerleaders in the media to ask some questions of themselves.”
I personally doubt that will happen.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/node/7818