Thread: Does the US media have a liberal bias?

Bronstein at Large : Love or lust, Obama and the fawning press need to get a room


On January 23, 2008, Bronstein announced that he was leaving his job as editor of the San Francisco Chronicle to take an editor-at-large position with Hearst Newspapers.




BRONSTEIN AT LARGE
June 8, 2009
Love or lust, Obama and the fawning press need to get a room

When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters, "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that?

OK, dad. We'll behave.

And according to a new Pew Research Center poll, we are behaving...like fans. On domestic press, it showed that "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House" with "roughly twice as much" Obama coverage about his "personal or leadership qualities" than was the case for either previous president.

Back in the US, NBC's Brian Williams' two-part "Living Large With the Top Dog" feature on Mr. Obama's life included a plug for Conan O'Brien's new show and mention of cable talkies where Mr. Obama only cited MSNBC personalities.

Accident? I don't think so. There were a few probing moments in there, but they were overshadowed by the flash of hanging out in the back of the Auto One limo and having burgers. A little navel-gazing among journalism standards hall monitors about whether the thing had been too soft came and went.

Then, this Sunday in the NYTimes, there was full-on chick-flick swooning over Barack and Michelle Obama's heavily scented "date night" in NY City and its high bar standard effect on our relationship culture, with just a hint of controversy over the taxpayer costs to add some spice. I swear I've seen this movie, only Michael Douglas was the President. Or Harrison Ford. Or one of those cool and languid characters you'd want to like you. George Bush needed to be beer-bar likable to get elected. His successor has managed to get a lot of people to want to be liked by him.

And in Paris, Mr. Obama talked about how he'd love to take his wife for a romantic tour of the City of Lovers, but couldn't. Then he did. I'm guessing some regular-Joe freedom fries weren't on the menu.

This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we're not.

You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?

If I wanted to see highly manicured image management I'd just take some No-Doz and read Gavin Newsom's tweets. But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl. (In California, there's no other option.)

I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn't happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu." It's the early 1960s and Camelot all over again:

Very attractive wife, cute, precocious kids and the hopes and dreams of at least 63 percent of the population sitting on the athletic shoulders of a young, charismatic, mold-breaking leader, Blah, blah. (Oh, and a Chicago Mayor Richard Daley helped make it possible. We can play the Lincoln-Kennedy parallels game here.) Only there's a puppy now instead of a pony and it seems like Barack Obama may be less socially, self-destructively libertine than Mr. Kennedy. In fact, he's downright conservative on things like same-sex marriage. (It's smart to have a wholesome life -- though very clearly, in the sinuous world of the Obamas, not to the point of abstinence -- when you're pushing programs that get labeled as socialist.)

So we're in love, lust, or just a whole lot of like. Clearly we get something in exchange, whether it's a little reflected exuberance, a sense of history or just some very minor role in a fun movie. If you want to appear in a movie with John Travolta, you go willingly with him to the LA Scientology Center and are happy about it. "I'm clear, man. Hand me the cans."

I'm not sure Mr. Obama is necessarily getting away with anything here. In Cairo, when he spoke of the "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," more than a few writers pointed out that this meant unless you're the Egyptian government or two gay people wanting to get married. What the President was saying overseas, to mostly purplish commentators' delight over the symbolic significance of the event, Dick Cheney was actually meaning in his own "freedom means freedom for everyone" speech about same-sex weddings.

The style-over-substance hit followed him from continent to continent. "While the president is popular among Europeans," the Wall Street Journal wrote, "he returned from his second trip to Europe with little more progress on key issues" than he got on his first visit. That's the Journal. But the Washington Post, where the John Kennedy myth was nurtured like a golden statue, managed a cautionary op-ed column from Robert Samuelson warning that "our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power." He meant checks from the press.
Samuelson was one of the few in the media to give some room to the Pew Research Center poll.

So far, this is all about image and character and press "opportunities." But with what CNN medical reporter Elizabeth Cohen called this morning "gazillions of dollars" of our money at stake and crazy people with nukes bristling from around the edges of the world, we can't afford not to keep a closer eye on the substance thing.
Posted By: Phil Bronstein (Email) | June 08 2009 at 03:35 PM









The assistant managing editor of Newsweek sould be capable of choosing his words more carefully.

Must say, I was very disappointed in FOX news today. O'Reilly was blasting salon.org chick about partial abortions but some numbers didn't jive (even against another FOX broadcast) and his (and her) arguments fell short of the mark. Hannity wasn't much better in one segment -- attacking garbage disposal in Pelosi's SF? I think their producers are on vakay. I don't take their words as truth, but they usually have pretty good offensive takes to the libbie fluff.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Must say, I was very disappointed in FOX news today. O'Reilly was blasting salon.org chick about partial abortions but some numbers didn't jive (even against another FOX broadcast) and his (and her) arguments fell short of the mark. Hannity wasn't much better in one segment

o'reilly and hannity.....that's quite the exciting friday night you lined up for yourself, jet.

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Must say, I was very disappointed in FOX news today. O'Reilly was blasting salon.org chick about partial abortions but some numbers didn't jive (even against another FOX broadcast) and his (and her) arguments fell short of the mark. Hannity wasn't much better in one segment

o'reilly and hannity.....that's quite the exciting friday night you lined up for yourself, jet.

As opposed to your Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann & that spittin' fool who gets a "warm, tingly sensation up his let" watching BO?

^ hehe. rc and his playground pals just can't give it up, can they?

On The Media: Transcript of "A New Privilege" (September 25, 2009)




On the Media from NPR (National Public Radio)

A New Privilege
September 25, 2009

The state secrets privilege allows the government to ask judges to dismiss trials for national security reasons. Civil libertarians say the government abuses the privilege in order to avoid lawsuits. On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder laid out the ways President Obama will reform the privilege, but lawyer and professor Jonathan Turley says the reforms don't go far enough.



JONATHAN TURLEY: If George Bush had proposed this type of change, then the newspapers would have been all over it, asking experts, people who've litigated in this area, whether this is a real change, whether this is substantive, and, more importantly, what was left out.

What you saw here, as we've seen in other cases, like the torture area, is that the media immediately picks up with the White House spin. There’s very little effort to look at what of substance is here and what is not here. And when you look at it, you realize that this is a bit of a Potemkin village (Potemkin village: something that seems impressive but in fact lacks substance). It has all of the façade of procedures but not much of the depth.

Reporters did, I thought, a very fine job in questioning the Bush Administration about whether fine-sounding words actually had equally fine substance. But none of that has occurred here. The media is just assuming that President Obama is on the side of the angels.

^ Well, the main media ditched the Van Jones and ACORN stories until they could not hide them any longer. Heard the NYT buried the Letterman story in the business section.
The leftie bloggers are sure pushing their agenda tho, and spewing vitriole and puke all along the way.

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Heard the NYT buried the Letterman story in the business section.

is that what you 'heard' jet?

because i SAW it on their homepage yesterday.....and you'll never believe what else....i actually read it. yes jet, that's right. i actually read the article i'm posting about it. not just parroting what i 'heard' on foxnews....you might want to give this a try sometime.

^ But she "heard that...."

Serious question, Jet.

Where did you "hear" this?

I've supposed for some time, that you listen to political talk radio.

Here's the article in the NYT business pages. Sorry, I don't have a hard copy. Didn't figure a sex scandal and extortion charge would be relegated to the biz pages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/bu.../03extort.html

Buried or not, Jet. Its a bit lenghty to bury anywhere

I do not alltogether disagree with you. He has dished it out many times. Now its his turn. Comedian or not

^ Just strange it was in the biz pages; it's not like it has anything to do with his Worldwide Pants Company's quarterly business performance unless that is connected with his sexual permormance.

How will Shep Smith keep his job at FOX?

"Every vote against the public option is a vote for the insurance companies," Smith said.

You make it sound as if Smith's statements are out of the ordinary. Why?

Morales was on the air three times that morning. Each of her reports varied slightly but were along the same line.


Morning Joe


MORALES: The first lady wearing gold already. That's how confident...

MORALES: A lot of confidence here from the Chicago delegation, uh, particularly after the president and first lady made such a passionate and emotional appeal to the IOC voters here. It really seems at this point, uhh, if I'm quoting a couple of sports writers that I talked to that is really Chicago's to lose now that the president has spoken and the first lady made such a lasting impression here. Uh, you know, it -- it remains to be seen what will happen in the next couple of hours because it's scheduled to go for a vote about 12:30 Eastern time but, uh, a lot of people feeling like this is Chicago's time.


MORALES: Oh, it was crazy. We -- in the press we were all standing there waiting to see if the president and first lady would even walk by us! But he kind of got stuck behind a wall as, uh, the IOC pretty much rushed him. Everybody seemed to really want their picture with the president, shaking hands; and of course the IOC voters trying to appear somewhat impartial but you could tell that they, too --

ANCHOR: (giggling)

MORALES: -- felt the rock star power there that the president and first lady were exuding.





The POTUS does not have rock star status. Obama the 2008 campaigner, ok, POTUS, no.

Originally Posted by attaboy

You make it sound as if Smith's statements are out of the ordinary. Why?

Smith’s views on health care (in the video I posted) seem to be out of line with the (most of) rest of the FOX News commentators, from what I have heard listening to FOX News.

I understand you're comparing Shepard's reporting to O'Reilly or Hannity's shows, while I'm comparing the example you provided to previous editorializing I've seen on Shepard's part. It's not uncommon for Smith to editorialize during his reporting. He does it often enough that his liberal leanings are recognizable. He hasn't been fired yet.

^ I am skeptical of the headlines.

Were they actually used.

Where is, "ripped from here" Boon?

Please list the source.

I read the papaer every day and night and I never saw that.

Originally Posted by Milkman

^ I am skeptical of the headlines.

Were they actually used.

Where is, "ripped from here" Boon?

Please list the source.

I read the papaer every day and night and I never saw that.

Gee whiz M/M, just roll your mouse over the "here" will ya?
BTW, it's satire...

Semper Fi, Happy Birthday US Marines!!!! Yeah!!!

This is too good to pass on. Newsweek stealing their cover photo of Palin in running gear that was initially shot for Running World. OK, they got it from a stock photographer, but gee, did they fire all their own photogs already? Well, the mag will sell alot of issues! How slovenly of Newsweek tho to revert to yet more personal attacks against Republicans like Palin. Looking more like a tabloid everyday. I wonder if the National Enquirer is worried?

The poor libbies just loathe Palin and they can't attack her on anything substantive so they, like the libbies on our board, resort to seething personal attacks. Takes people's minds off healthcare and what a dufus Obama is making of himself and the country overseas.

Ah, and her book will also be on the NYT best seller list for months, too. Poor libbies gnashing their teeth in frustration.


"Newsweek" Palin Cover a Big Controversy: "Newsweek" Clarifies Thought Process - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

they can't attack her on anything substantive

this is a joke, right?

^^

Jet, I'll have to say this again, for the umpteenth time:

It's not just libs. Moderate conservatives in the GOP loathe Palin and she has alienate many in the GOP.

She hurts the Repubs.

^ True, MM, some GOPers hate her. But, she is the most talked about of any of 'em. And what did Rahm say, make use of a crisis?