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<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> nrlc@nrlc.org [mailto:nrlc@nrlc.org]
<BR><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, November 11, 2008 8:26 AM<BR><B>To:</B> Art
Kelly<BR><B>Subject:</B> The Media and Obama<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
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<TD vAlign=top align=left width=99><B><I><FONT
face="Bookman Old Style" size=4>National</FONT></I><FONT
face="Bookman Old Style" size=4> </FONT><FONT
face="Bookman Old Style" size=2><BR>Right to Life</FONT></B></TD>
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<P><I><B><FONT face="Garamond Book" color=#000080
size=7> </FONT><FONT face=Georgia
color=#000080 size=7>Today's <BR>News &
Views</FONT></B></I></P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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<P align=left><B><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Today's News &
Views<BR>November 11, 2008</FONT></B></P>
<P><B><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=4>The Media and Obama: the Past
as Prologue?</FONT></B></P>
<P><I><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Editor's note. I'd very much
appreciate your input at <A
href="mailto:daveandrusko@gmail.com">daveandrusko@gmail.com</A>.</FONT></I></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>When I ran across Deborah
Howell's not me[a] culpa in the Washington Post Sunday, I had just
finished reading a collection of post-election profiles of
pro-abortion President-elect Barack Obama so sugary sweet you gained
pounds just by eye-balling them. Whether they appeared in the same
Sunday "Outlook" section that Howell's Ombudsman column ran in or
the major news magazines that ran rivers of mushy/gushy stories
about Obama, they represented a kind of exclamation point on
Howell's conclusion that the Post's campaign coverage had
demonstrated a "tilt" toward Obama.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Let's look both at Howell's
column and briefly at a wonderful piece in Monday's Washington Times
written by Jennifer Harper that places Howell's "Hey, don't blame
me!" column in a larger context. The point of Howell's analysis was
to concede the obvious–the Post did everything but carpet bomb the
McCain campaign while throwing flower pedals in the direction of
Obama--but not at the expense of suggesting her colleagues had any
ulterior motives. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>For those of us old enough to
remember Watergate, her unintentionally amusing musings bring to
mind John Ehrlichman's infamous "modified limited hangout." For
those who don't immediately get the reference, it became a derisive,
all-purpose putdown for years afterwards.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>The gist is that you know your
cover story is no longer operative. What to do? Volunteer part of
the truth in the hope that the audience will be satisfied (or so
surprised) that you never have to own up to the far more damaging
truth safely tucked away.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>So, Howell tells us that the
Post editorial page ran two and a half times as many laudatory
opinion pieces on Obama as McCain and that "Stories and photos about
Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain." That
quantitative measure does not begin to measure the impact of the
layers of praise heaped on Obama in the stories and opinion pieces
or the vitriolic and dismissive tone of so much Post coverage of
Sen. McCain. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>In places like the Project for
Excellent in Journalism, they also quantify the negative stories.
And, of course, there were far more negative stories about McCain
than Obama. But mere numbers hardly do justice to the intensity of
the assault. If 10 firecrackers are dropped on Obama and 15 nuclear
weapons on McCain, are you conveying the full impact when you merely
say McCain was on the receiving end of more attacks?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>And at the same time the Post
did its best to eviscerate Gov. Sarah Palin, there were so few
mentions of Obama's vice president, Sen. Joseph Biden, we almost
forgot he was still on the campaign trail. Look at the
contrast.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>As Howell writes, as soon as
McCain chose Palin as his running mate, reporters were booking their
flights. No one suspected they did so in order to write puff pieces
about the first female governor in Alaska's history, an intuition
richly borne out by experience.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Biden's first presidential
campaigns in 1988 had exposed him as, shall we say, ethically
challenged. Virtually nothing was mentioned about how that pattern
of behavior had extended long past that first disastrous run. More
important, neither did the Post see fit to highlight the seemingly
limitless string of gaffes and (to be polite) erroneous statements
that flowed from Biden's lips these last few months. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>And then there's this
"no-kidding" observation that came near the end: Howell acknowledges
as how the Obama "deserved tougher scrutiny" about his undergraduate
years, his start in Chicago, and his controversial associations.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>What a coincidence. The same
week Obama is safely elected you discover your paper had kowtowed to
Obama, so inadequately covering him that he is still largely a blank
slate the day he is elected our 44th President.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Harper's Washington Times piece
notes that the public understood perfectly well that the media was
tilted. "A Pew Research Center survey released in late October
found, for example, that 70 percent of voters agreed that the press
wanted Mr. Obama to win the White House; the figure was 62 percent
even among Democratic respondents," Harper writes. On the general
topic of bias, "A current Harvard University analysis revealed that
77 percent of Americans say the press in politically biased; of that
group, 5 percent said it skewed conservative," Harper
added.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>One other thought. There is
considerable discussion just how long and how harmonious the
honeymoon will be. Consider these two factors.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>1. On the one hand, the
mainstream media has an enormous investment in Obama. On the other
hand, when reporters, as inevitably they will, come down from their
self-induced euphoria, they will have intermittent pangs of guilt
for having sold their integrity for a mess of pottage. The former
will win out over the latter for sometime. But at the same
time…</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>2. You don't have to be a
pro-lifer, a Republican, or even a skeptic to realize that Obama
possesses a very healthy ego and has not shown particularly patience
with the institutional media, otherwise known as the dinosaur media.
He benefited enormously from the Old Guard--the hit pieces on Palin,
the recycled stories about McCain from decades ago–but Obama readily
circumvented them whenever it served his purposes, which was most of
the time. As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post discussed
yesterday, Obama built up a formidable digital outreach, choosing
bloggers and places like politico.com to announce breaking
news.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>So, I ask you, when, as
President, Obama continues that pattern, only more so, does the
"mainstream media" ask for its ring back?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Please send your thoughts to <A
href="mailto:daveandrusko@gmail.com">daveandrusko@gmail.com</A>.
</FONT></P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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