Barack Obama just uncorked a little shock-and-awe on America’s political establishment. First African American president. Stunning landslide victory. Massive legislative majorities. <\/p>\n
I say, congratulations.<\/p>\n
But I also find myself hoping that journalists — myself included — will keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, declining the urge to hop on the bandwagon.<\/p>\n
After 9\/11, reporters bought into the notion that a complacent, compliant media is a sign of patriotism and national unity. We were intimidated then by President Bush’s apparent mandate.<\/p>\n
As a consequence, we failed in our duty to inform our audiences about the war on terror and the build-up to the Iraq War. That cannot happen again.<\/p>\n
(I sometimes wonder if President Bush would have been a less disastrous leader if we reporters had done our jobs better, forcing him to confront tough and complicated questions.) <\/p>\n
Barack Obama deserves respect and even-handed treatment, of course. <\/p>\n
But the press will serve him and the American people best by remaining skeptical, critical, and independent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barack Obama just uncorked a little shock-and-awe on America’s political establishment. First African American president. […]<\/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\/216"}],"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=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}