The news media in these final days of Election 2008 is caught on the horns of a dilemma. <\/p>\n
On the one hand, they’re convinced that Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, has a lock on the presidency. What’s more, the vast majority of reporters are captivated by the historic nature of his candidacy.<\/p>\n
Obama arrives on the scene at a time of intense national turmoil — two wars, a Depression-like economic slump, the meltdown of one of our two big parties — AND he would be our first African American president.<\/p>\n
That, my friends, is a big story.<\/p>\n
But journalists are also deeply conflicted about the appearance (and possible reality) of bias.<\/p>\n
Are they “in the tank” for Obama? Is John McCain, the Arizona Republican, getting the journalistic shaft. <\/p>\n
In a column today, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz says yes: reporters are effectively measuring the drapes on Obama’s behalf. Here’s the money quote.<\/p>\n
So much for the formality of next week’s election. Many pundits and publications seem so certain of a big Democratic win that they’re exploring the intricacies of an Obama administration and whether the party will have a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate.<\/p>\n
“If the mainstream media are wrong about Obama and the voters pull a Truman, that is going to be the end of whatever shred of credibility they have left,” says Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If Kurtz — and the McCain campaign — are correct, then the media’s credibility is already shot. <\/p>\n
You can’t be an extension of the Democratic National Committee and still be a journalist, even if you’re right about the outcome.<\/p>\n
But other journalists say this simply isn’t so. John Harris and Jim VandeHei at Politico.com argue that coverage of McCain is negative because his campaign has been a disaster.<\/p>\n
There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site \u2014 when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring \u2014 has made us cringe.<\/p>\n
As it happens, McCain\u2019s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama\u2019s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My opinion? <\/p>\n
For what it’s worth, I think journalists have done a better job this election cycle than ever before. <\/p>\n
They’ve probed weak spots in both candidates’ records; but they’ve also felt liberated to challenge false and absurd assertions.<\/p>\n
The McCain campaign has asked America to center much of the campaign coverage on questions about Obama’s legitimacy. In a nutshell: Is he one of us? <\/p>\n
But accepting that basic narrative as THE story of the 2008 wouldn’t have been “balance.” It would have been unconscionable.<\/p>\n
Instead, reporters pushed both candidates to talk substantively about the issues that face America — a fair and honest debate that McCain’s staff tried unabashedly to curtail.<\/p>\n
The McCain campaign has also asked journalists to ignore the fact that their operation has functioned erratically, even sloppily.<\/p>\n
We know factually that some of the key decisions that faced their candidate, including the choice of a running-mate, were made hastily.<\/p>\n
As a consequence, a large number of Republicans and conservatives have disavowed Sen. McCain’s effort. <\/p>\n
That’s news.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that this wheel will turn. Democrats will nominate someone soon who will run a far clumsier campaign than we’ve seen this year from the Republicans.<\/p>\n
And when journalists see that blood in the water (whether its blue blood or red blood) they’ll come running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The news media in these final days of Election 2008 is caught on the horns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}