I heard on the radio today, and I've been reading for the past few days, about how President Obama has received more combined press coverage in his first 100 days in office then Presidents G.W. Bush and Clinton combined. Many of the conservative radio hosts I listen to and respect are ranting and raving about this fact today... but I think they are missing the point. The issue for me is not the amount of press coverage that President Obama is receiving. In fact, I would say that the volume of coverage is not inappropriate in and of itself. He is, after all, America's first black president, a historical fact that on its face is worthy of increased coverage, and is something that brings pride to huge swarths of the American populous.
No, as I say, the amount of coverage is not at issue for me. It is the type of coverage that he receives, the sheer volume of glowing, postive coverage and the disproportionately small amount of time and space devoted to his mistakes... the way the print and broadcast media fawns all over our president... and the fact that if a Republican President (any Republican President) had made the same mistake, he or she (Palin 2012?) would have been savaged in the press. Imagine, for a second, if George W. Bush had tried to appoint even a fraction of the number of tax cheats to Cabinet posts and high Government positions that President Obama did attempt to appoint. The media uproar would have been deafening. Your ears would still hurt from the Media's voluminous righteous discord, and rightfully so.
I do not begrudge the President his rock star politician status... he can't help it if so many in the media follow his every move with the adoring admiration of a teenage groupie just praying that they can catch a glimpse of their hero. Maybe they'll get really lucky, and he'll even make eye contact with them. I wonder what kind of thrill that would give Chris Matthews of MSNBC. Actually, I'd rather not know.
It disgusts me that our so-called free press is so taken with our President that they find ways to sugar-coat even his mis-steps. There is a certain hypocrisy in a media that will excoriate a Dan Quayle as a dunce for mis-spelling a word in an elementary school (a man the media almost universally despised), but then happily ignore President Obama's claim, as a candidate for president, that he had already been to 57 states with one to go. Both are silly slip-ups that should have been meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Only one of them was treated that way by the American Free Press.
It also bothers me that so many in the press present themselves as impartial journalists, when in fact they are actually advocates for a particular point of view. In this case, they subscribe to the same philosophies & worldview as our President, and consequently, are in the tank for him. It is their responsibility, their duty as journalists to report the news in a detached, impartial fashion. It is a responsibility that they fail at miserably on a daily basis. What do they teach in journalism schools if not this most basic, core principle of journalism?
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