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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Has liberal cocooning hurt Democrats?

Michael Barone makes the point that Barack Obama just wasn't ready to answer the sorts of questions that he got from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous.
This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions.

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.
Democrats just aren't as used to getting that sort of tough questioning about matters that they know will make them less appealing to the average voter. Republicans are used to those sorts of questions because they get them all the time from the media. And the adoring media coverage that Obama has received for so much of this campaign has not given him the practice that he needed to deal gracefully with questions that exposed more than his well-honed appeals for a change from the old style of politics. Thus he's reduced to refusing to participate in more debates with Clinton. He's left with complaining about gotcha questions while sending out a fundraising appeal to his followers based on those questions. Classy.

And the man who once campaigned by saying that "words mean something" is now in the position of telling people to ignore the words that he himself said, his minister said, and the man who hosted the fundraiser that launched his state senate campaign said.

And Hillary Clinton, despite her lines about taking the heat when she's in the kitchen has done her share of whining about tough questions. Remember her complaints about always getting the first question. Jake Tapper has some more links on when the Clintons complained about the questions that they had received from reporters. That's what should happen when you're the frontrunner. Both Clinton and Obama seem aghast at the idea that the media, and remember this doesn't include Fox because they refuse to debate on Fox, would dare to ask a few tough questions to candidates vying for the presidency. I'm sure that they're a few Republicans out there who would be happy to say to both Democratic candidates, "Welcome to our world."

John Harris and Jim VandeHei, two experienced political journalists, analyze the trends in the media that have led to so many journalists supporting Obama and piling on the criticism of Gibson and Stephanopolous. As they rightly note there has been a mission creep in reporting with more and more personal opinion entering stories. Given the desire of many journalists to see an Obama victory over Clinton, most of the mainstream media has ignored questions about Obama's connection with a member of the Weather Underground or the answers he gave about gun rights on an earlier survey which he denied filling out but had his own handwriting answering the questions. And that pro-Obama bias left many in the media joining the Obamasphere to complain about a few tough questions. Harris and VandeHei know that so many journalists have been bitten by the Barack bug because they have felt it themselves or seen others who have.
If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

(Harris only here: 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 de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)

(VandeHei only here: 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. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)
Mainstream journalists like to pretend that they have some sort of magical skills that allow them to detach themselves from their own biases when they write stories. And so we observe reporters who acknowledge that they have felt the great Obamasm letting their preferences leach into their reporting.
This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama.

But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational… And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.”

It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism.
And, as Harris and VandeHei point out, that favoritism has led many in the media to simply write the same old idolatrous commentary about the Obama campaign instead of covering questions about some of his connections and earlier positions that have been public knowledge for a good long time if you've read the conservative blogosphere but, until now, just hadn't made it into the MSM.

We saw a similar phenomenon with John McCain in 2000, but who knows if the media has maintained their love affair with the man they loved to describe as a maverick when he was opposing George Bush if he is now going against their own personal favorite. It will be an interesting race between the old media darling and the new one. Editors will have to be inoculating their reporters every couple of days.
Labels: Democrats, Media

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:32 AM 0 comments

Comments:

Michael Barone makes the point that Barack Obama just wasn't ready to answer the sorts of questions that he got from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous.

This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions.

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.

Democrats just aren't as used to getting that sort of tough questioning about matters that they know will make them less appealing to the average voter. Republicans are used to those sorts of questions because they get them all the time from the media. And the adoring media coverage that Obama has received for so much of this campaign has not given him the practice that he needed to deal gracefully with questions that exposed more than his well-honed appeals for a change from the old style of politics. Thus he's reduced to refusing to participate in more debates with Clinton. He's left with complaining about gotcha questions while sending out a fundraising appeal to his followers based on those questions. Classy.

And the man who once campaigned by saying that "words mean something" is now in the position of telling people to ignore the words that he himself said, his minister said, and the man who hosted the fundraiser that launched his state senate campaign said.

And Hillary Clinton, despite her lines about taking the heat when she's in the kitchen has done her share of whining about tough questions. Remember her complaints about always getting the first question. Jake Tapper has some more links on when the Clintons complained about the questions that they had received from reporters. That's what should happen when you're the frontrunner. Both Clinton and Obama seem aghast at the idea that the media, and remember this doesn't include Fox because they refuse to debate on Fox, would dare to ask a few tough questions to candidates vying for the presidency. I'm sure that they're a few Republicans out there who would be happy to say to both Democratic candidates, "Welcome to our world."

John Harris and Jim VandeHei, two experienced political journalists, analyze the trends in the media that have led to so many journalists supporting Obama and piling on the criticism of Gibson and Stephanopolous. As they rightly note there has been a mission creep in reporting with more and more personal opinion entering stories. Given the desire of many journalists to see an Obama victory over Clinton, most of the mainstream media has ignored questions about Obama's connection with a member of the Weather Underground or the answers he gave about gun rights on an earlier survey which he denied filling out but had his own handwriting answering the questions. And that pro-Obama bias left many in the media joining the Obamasphere to complain about a few tough questions. Harris and VandeHei know that so many journalists have been bitten by the Barack bug because they have felt it themselves or seen others who have.

If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

(Harris only here: 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 de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.)

(VandeHei only here: 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. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.)

Mainstream journalists like to pretend that they have some sort of magical skills that allow them to detach themselves from their own biases when they write stories. And so we observe reporters who acknowledge that they have felt the great Obamasm letting their preferences leach into their reporting.

This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama.

But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational… And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.”

It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism.

And, as Harris and VandeHei point out, that favoritism has led many in the media to simply write the same old idolatrous commentary about the Obama campaign instead of covering questions about some of his connections and earlier positions that have been public knowledge for a good long time if you've read the conservative blogosphere but, until now, just hadn't made it into the MSM.

We saw a similar phenomenon with John McCain in 2000, but who knows if the media has maintained their love affair with the man they loved to describe as a maverick when he was opposing George Bush if he is now going against their own personal favorite. It will be an interesting race between the old media darling and the new one. Editors will have to be inoculating their reporters every couple of days.

Labels: Democrats, Media

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:32 AM 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Has liberal cocooning hurt Democrats?

		Betsy's Page

HOME Betsy neither necessarily uses, nor endorses, the products advertised on this site. Advance your career by earning a masters degree online. The truth about Avesil Wikio Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you. Site Feed		Saturday, April 19, 2008 Has liberal cocooning hurt Democrats? Michael Barone makes the point that Barack Obama just wasn't ready to answer the sorts of questions that he got from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous. This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions. Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen. Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared. Democrats just aren't as used to getting that sort of tough questioning about matters that they know will make them less appealing to the average voter. Republicans are used to those sorts of questions because they get them all the time from the media. And the adoring media coverage that Obama has received for so much of this campaign has not given him the practice that he needed to deal gracefully with questions that exposed more than his well-honed appeals for a change from the old style of politics. Thus he's reduced to refusing to participate in more debates with Clinton. He's left with complaining about gotcha questions while sending out a fundraising appeal to his followers based on those questions. Classy. And the man who once campaigned by saying that "words mean something" is now in the position of telling people to ignore the words that he himself said, his minister said, and the man who hosted the fundraiser that launched his state senate campaign said. And Hillary Clinton, despite her lines about taking the heat when she's in the kitchen has done her share of whining about tough questions. Remember her complaints about always getting the first question. Jake Tapper has some more links on when the Clintons complained about the questions that they had received from reporters. That's what should happen when you're the frontrunner. Both Clinton and Obama seem aghast at the idea that the media, and remember this doesn't include Fox because they refuse to debate on Fox, would dare to ask a few tough questions to candidates vying for the presidency. I'm sure that they're a few Republicans out there who would be happy to say to both Democratic candidates, "Welcome to our world." John Harris and Jim VandeHei, two experienced political journalists, analyze the trends in the media that have led to so many journalists supporting Obama and piling on the criticism of Gibson and Stephanopolous. As they rightly note there has been a mission creep in reporting with more and more personal opinion entering stories. Given the desire of many journalists to see an Obama victory over Clinton, most of the mainstream media has ignored questions about Obama's connection with a member of the Weather Underground or the answers he gave about gun rights on an earlier survey which he denied filling out but had his own handwriting answering the questions. And that pro-Obama bias left many in the media joining the Obamasphere to complain about a few tough questions. Harris and VandeHei know that so many journalists have been bitten by the Barack bug because they have felt it themselves or seen others who have. If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain. The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon. (Harris only here: 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 de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.) (VandeHei only here: 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. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.) Mainstream journalists like to pretend that they have some sort of magical skills that allow them to detach themselves from their own biases when they write stories. And so we observe reporters who acknowledge that they have felt the great Obamasm letting their preferences leach into their reporting. This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama. But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational… And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.” It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism. And, as Harris and VandeHei point out, that favoritism has led many in the media to simply write the same old idolatrous commentary about the Obama campaign instead of covering questions about some of his connections and earlier positions that have been public knowledge for a good long time if you've read the conservative blogosphere but, until now, just hadn't made it into the MSM. We saw a similar phenomenon with John McCain in 2000, but who knows if the media has maintained their love affair with the man they loved to describe as a maverick when he was opposing George Bush if he is now going against their own personal favorite. It will be an interesting race between the old media darling and the new one. Editors will have to be inoculating their reporters every couple of days. Labels: Democrats, Media posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:32 AM 0 comments Comments: Michael Barone makes the point that Barack Obama just wasn't ready to answer the sorts of questions that he got from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous. This doesn't mean that Obama is responsible for Wright's outrageous statements or for Ayers' criminal acts (the charges against him were dropped because of government misconduct). But Obama's choices to associate with Wright and Ayers tend to undercut his appealing message -- very appealing after 15 years of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- that we must strive to overcome the racial and cultural and ideological divisions which have dominated our politics They are something that voters are entitled to weigh as they make their decisions. Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen. Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared. Democrats just aren't as used to getting that sort of tough questioning about matters that they know will make them less appealing to the average voter. Republicans are used to those sorts of questions because they get them all the time from the media. And the adoring media coverage that Obama has received for so much of this campaign has not given him the practice that he needed to deal gracefully with questions that exposed more than his well-honed appeals for a change from the old style of politics. Thus he's reduced to refusing to participate in more debates with Clinton. He's left with complaining about gotcha questions while sending out a fundraising appeal to his followers based on those questions. Classy. And the man who once campaigned by saying that "words mean something" is now in the position of telling people to ignore the words that he himself said, his minister said, and the man who hosted the fundraiser that launched his state senate campaign said. And Hillary Clinton, despite her lines about taking the heat when she's in the kitchen has done her share of whining about tough questions. Remember her complaints about always getting the first question. Jake Tapper has some more links on when the Clintons complained about the questions that they had received from reporters. That's what should happen when you're the frontrunner. Both Clinton and Obama seem aghast at the idea that the media, and remember this doesn't include Fox because they refuse to debate on Fox, would dare to ask a few tough questions to candidates vying for the presidency. I'm sure that they're a few Republicans out there who would be happy to say to both Democratic candidates, "Welcome to our world." John Harris and Jim VandeHei, two experienced political journalists, analyze the trends in the media that have led to so many journalists supporting Obama and piling on the criticism of Gibson and Stephanopolous. As they rightly note there has been a mission creep in reporting with more and more personal opinion entering stories. Given the desire of many journalists to see an Obama victory over Clinton, most of the mainstream media has ignored questions about Obama's connection with a member of the Weather Underground or the answers he gave about gun rights on an earlier survey which he denied filling out but had his own handwriting answering the questions. And that pro-Obama bias left many in the media joining the Obamasphere to complain about a few tough questions. Harris and VandeHei know that so many journalists have been bitten by the Barack bug because they have felt it themselves or seen others who have. If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain. The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon. (Harris only here: 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 de-tox, to cure their swooning over Obama’s political skill. Even VandeHei seemed to have been bitten by the bug after the Iowa caucus.) (VandeHei only here: 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. It certainly helps his cause that reporters also seem very tired of the Clintons and their paint-by-polls approach to governing.) Mainstream journalists like to pretend that they have some sort of magical skills that allow them to detach themselves from their own biases when they write stories. And so we observe reporters who acknowledge that they have felt the great Obamasm letting their preferences leach into their reporting. This shift is also what allows NBC News to feel comfortable with its Obama reporter, Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged that he finds it hard to keep his objectivity covering Obama. But when does a legitimate attempt to capture the energy and mood of a political movement become boosterism? Did Cowan cross the line in this dispatch for the “Nightly News” on Feb. 5?: “Since the early days of his campaign, the candidate has morphed from the intellectual to the inspirational… And it's that theme that's brought crowds in the door and to their feet.” It is a thin and often illegible line between this kind of journalism and outright favoritism. And, as Harris and VandeHei point out, that favoritism has led many in the media to simply write the same old idolatrous commentary about the Obama campaign instead of covering questions about some of his connections and earlier positions that have been public knowledge for a good long time if you've read the conservative blogosphere but, until now, just hadn't made it into the MSM. We saw a similar phenomenon with John McCain in 2000, but who knows if the media has maintained their love affair with the man they loved to describe as a maverick when he was opposing George Bush if he is now going against their own personal favorite. It will be an interesting race between the old media darling and the new one. Editors will have to be inoculating their reporters every couple of days. Labels: Democrats, Media posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:32 AM 0 comments Comments: Post a Comment

Advance your career by earning a masters degree online.

The truth about Avesil

Wikio

Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights

Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you. Site Feed

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Has liberal cocooning hurt Democrats?

Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.

e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com

Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.

Site Feed