Finally, an end to the ads and phone calls. The house is strangely quiet as the robo calls fade into history. My wife is a school teacher and on the list for every Democrat phone list in existence.
I know that John McCain, a personal hero of mine, lost. I did not vote for him, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I did not vote for Barack Obama either. My honest belief is that the real culprit and problem in our country is the complicity of both major political parties.
Every four years we have this dance where they pretend to be different, but end up with the same old partisanship and the victors spend the next four years rewarding their districts with "bridges to nowhere."
The real loser in this election was the media. Between Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the left we ended up not with real political vetting, but cheerleading for one candidate or the other.
I heard Chris Mathews say he got a "tingle" down his leg when he heard Barack Obama speak. There were stories of other reporters wearing Obama t-shirts to rallies. It was clear from the beginning (don't ask me, ask Hillary Clinton and Saturday Night Live) that the media was in the tank for one guy.
That is over the line. It used to be sacrosanct that newsrooms were supposed to be neutral. Reporters were supposed to be down the line neutral, even if their personal beliefs were for one side or the other.
From my experience, most reporters lean to the left, or at least to the Democrat Party. There are few reporters on the right in most U.S. newsrooms. Not a criticism, just a fact. During my career I never talked politics in the newsroom and rarely out of it. My politics are all over the map anyway, but I always believed as a reporter it was important that no one really know where I stood on political issues.
After Al Gore lost in 2000 we had some in the Flint Journal newsroom who were openly despondent over the loss. They spent endless hours following the court battles and loudly expressing their opinions.
These are the same folks who were covering races involving Democrats and Republicans. But when an outdoor writer was assigned to cover a gun rights issue, many expressed the opinion that he could not be "impartial" because he was a hunter. The hypocrisy is blatant.
One of the editors at the paper routinely visited on the phone with Democrat operatives and sources, sometimes offering advice. Again, totally over the line.
I understand that at some point during the recent campaign the editor had to remind his staff in an e-mail they were to try and remain impartial and avoid campaign pins and yard signs.
It was true again in 2004. So the idea that reporters are somehow neutral, impartial observers is simply bogus. It is also lamentable. Hopefully, the fawning attention of Barack Obama will at least turn back to some honest reflection and introspection on their role in keeping tabs on the new administration.
On Monday, the paper took a hit for an anti-Obama news wrapper sponsored by the NRA. On Wednesday it led the paper with a headline that had Obama's name in red-white and blue. I just don't remember any other President who had his name run in a headline like that.
Readers and viewers have to trust that the information they are getting is even-handed and fair. As an insider for 30 years I can tell you that is bogus.
My hope and prayer is that the news media will take a long hard look at how it covered this campaign and reform itself, but I'm not sure that will happen.
At one point Barack Obama (see this You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws) seemed to indicate he believed there were 57 or 59 states. That was beyond any gaffe uttered by Dan Quayle, even the famous plural potato spelling (a word many reporters have trouble with) and yet, little or nothing came of that on left leaning news organizations or Saturday Night Live.
Look, clearly Sarah Palin was not ready to be President. She was the governor of a small state, something like having a President from Arkansas, but the treatment of her inexperience, compared to that of the relative inexperience of Barack Obama is startling. Joe Biden makes a gaffe a minute and I don't have room here to list all the You Tube versions, but "the three letter word J-O-B-S," comes to mind. We'll see if my favorite programs "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," or Keith Olbermann find the same enthusiasm for making fun of Biden as they did of McCain and Palin.
In the meantime, while the media made sure that Obama got the velvet glove treatment, third party candidates like Ralph Nader, Bob Barr and others were completely ignored. That was deliberate too. In 2000, the press realized that Nader bled off enough votes to ruin Gore's chances and they weren't going to let that happen again.
You can be biased in both what you report and what you don't report.
I know a lot of my former colleagues will not agree with me on this issue, but down deep where their journalism ethics live, they may see my point.
McCain and Palin got a thorough vetting, Barack Obama did not. And the fault lies at the feet of a complicit media. Even with equally tough treatment, Obama may have won, but now we'll never know.
It is my hope that the media will now resume the work it should have been doing all along and get back to being neutral observers and not cheerleaders. The country needs an impartial tough press, no matter where personal allegiances lie.
President Obama deserves everyone's support and he has mine. Is he up for the job? I really don't know, because the media really didn't question any of his "change" statements or his excessive promises. He raised more than a half a billion dollars from who knows? His broken promise to use public financing was very troubling.
Let's hope that in the future third party voices will be heard and included. It's really the only way to break the stranglehold on entitlements and perks that are currently supported by a corrupt two party system.
I'm still glad the calls and ads have stopped. Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong.
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12 comments:
I'd bet the 57 state thing and the Biden "FDR on TV" during the stock market crash was from being tired from all the traveling they do leading up to these elections. I can't imagine doing all that and not being dead tired all the time.
I didn't vote for them.
Jeff T
Jeff T:
I agree and would cut both Obama and Biden some slack. My only point is is that the media does not cut the same slack for candidates they do not like.
All I'm asking for is a little even handedness.
Any honest person would have to agree if Sarah Palin had made the incredible statement she had been to 57 or 58 states, with only one or two to go, the media and late night shows would have had a field day.
I'm just asking for a little civility for both sides.
I'm pretty sure that Obama, even with an ivy league education probably learned how many states there are.
Thanks for stopping by.
I won't argue whether there are more Dems in the newsroom, I think that is obvious. But the Journal did miss the important part of the Obama story, namely local reaction in a city that has a large African-American population. Instead, they just went with the flag graphic (which was kind of lame) and the AP story.
Many newspapers ended up printing special sections and then re-running the presses when they sold out.
From a business side I understand the desire to make more money so I won't comment on that, but it does appear the cheerleading is continuing.
I did think I saw an online section for people (minority and otherwise) to chime in on their feelings about Obama's election.
Whether that translated to a dead tree version I don't know because I'm a little behind on my reading. :(
No way, Jim. McCain ran a disastrous, incompetent and blatantly negative campaign, he picked an nincompoop for a running mate, and you maintain the news media was unfair to him? I read the "mainstream media" reports on the campaign as carried on the wires and in the Free Press and watched it on network TV; in-depth political coverage was barely there. Mostly, it was usually superficial and stupid, such as the week we had to listen to the feigned GOP outrage over Obama's "lipstick" comment. If Obama would have had as many gaffs and mistakes as McCain perpetrated, he'd be have been beaten like a dog. His campaign was comparatively exciting as a news story, and of course that reflected in the coverage.
But if you really wanted the day-to-day inside political news you had to watch CNN, MSNBC (or for the NRA crowd, that famous GOP talking points outlet, Fox News) -- the mainstream rarely touched the closer examinations and discussions that cable did. Sure, Olberman and a couple of the talking heads on MSNBC are self-described progressives, but that's just a good balance to the right wing crap bloviated by O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Rove and those other GOP pretend journalists. I'm an adult, I can think for myself, and I can tell the difference. I consider guys like Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough (sp?) as commentators, not journalists. But hell, compare them to the hacks and goons of the political blogosphere and they look like giants.
So you don't think Obama was vetted? Come on, Jim, get real, it sounds like you're buying into the "terrorist sleeper agent" paranoia crowd. The opposition research guys were all over him like a bad suit, and all they got was endless replays of Wright's wackiest statements.
Did I vote for Obama? You betcha, and I'm happy to tell you I voted against the current president twice. Woulda voted against W. more, if I coulda.
Mossback P. Jones Jr., esq.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Obama wasn't vetted? Are you kidding? Hillary personally vetted him -- most questionable associations or actions were thoroughly covered in the democratic primary. And if there was something out there to find, I assure you, the Clintons would have. I could personally list all the questions I saw raised about him, including:
- Rezko
- Ayers
- connections to Kenyan Muslim extremists
- Rev. Wright
- Khalidi
- his financials
- his upbringing and education
- his "hidden agenda"
- his drug use
On the contrary, he may be the best vetted candidate in history. And let's also not forget that he wrote TWO BOOKS that tell us an immense amount about him.
Furthermore, the MSM was pushed into the position of defending him because so much disinformation was spreading around the internet. As you know, even McCain had to correct one of his own supporters it was so rampant.
At one point, McCain used to refer to the media as "his base". After he won the nomination, he cut them all off, prompting one reporter to yell, "Should we call it the no-talk express?"
Don't blame the media in this. McCain chose to not speak to them; he chose to keep Palin from them. She never even did a Sunday morning serious news show.
Don't dare compare semi-professional twenty-somethings at The Flint Journal with respectable, established national media like WSJ, Wash Post, NY Times. We don't think reporters are emotionless robots. And hey, at least when you're watching FOX or MSNBC, it's kind of out there for you to see -- proceed with caution. It's much harder to discern an agenda with someone like Wolf Blitzer (even though it seems to me there likely is one).
Furthermore, Obama was holding, what, 10-12 events a day? McCain was not even at half of that. McCain and Palin aides leaked information about each other to the MSM -- they're not supposed to cover it? Meanwhile, the Obama camp was hermetically sealed; NOTHING got out he didn't want out there or wasn't prepared to respond to.
And in conclusion, I think you sound like (no offense) a middle aged old-fashioned newspaper guy. And I respect that, I do. That's the way it used to be.
But it is no more. We're in the most fragmented society in the world. No one talks about "marketing" anymore -- today it's all about micro-targeting and niche appeal. The way news is reported will never be the same again. A recent report suggests that, against conventional wisdom, a paper's slant is not determined by its ownership; more than anything, it's determined by its AUDIENCE. The media is just giving the people what they want.
There are more voices than ever in the news. You think that's a bad thing? I suggest that you find a source you like and trust, and stick with it, and stop worrying about what other people are reading or watching.
Interesting take on the 57 state thing:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp
I talked to a guy at work today about that video and the first thing he said was that there are 57 Islamic states.
Jeff
Anonymous:
Actually the kind of vetting I was talking about has more to do with the media actually investigating how Obama plans to give 95 percent of the country a tax cut when only 60 percent of the country even pays income tax.
So when someone can tell me how Mr. Obama plans to pay for the promises he (or McCain) for that matter made then I'll believe that a complete vetting was done.
When these guys spout out promises, it's the media's job to test that against reality. Didn't see a whole lot of that during this election cycle.
I agree that the acquaintances of Obama was overblown and probably over hyped (by some).
I would wonder what the reaction would have been of the NYT, WP or Newsweek or other MSM outlets if someone had found that McCain had even once met in the home of an abortion clinic bomber. Somehow I don't see the same media shrug that Obama got.
In my career, I met and knew a lot of those NYT, Detroit Free Press, Newsday reporters that you think so highly of. Me, not so much. I've seen better and more even handed reporting done at the level of the Flint Journal, etc.
I'll never forget how a Washington Post reporter breezed into Flint after a first-grader killed another first-grader at Buell Elementary School.
The story she filed after being in our community for all of three days was so full of b.s. and errors that it amazed me this person had a job at the Cadillac Evening News, not the vaunted Washington Post.
A lot of the national reporters I have met were pompous asses who thought they were better than everyone else. Got news for 'em, they couldn't handle a day-to-day beat in most mid-size daily newspapers.
First they would kill the editors who assigned them more than one story a week.
So while I appreciate your argument, it doesn't work for me if you somehow think because someone works for the NYT or Washington Post they are superior to the folks who do the day-to-day grunt work in a medium sized daily paper.
I've had my byline in Newsday (my first Dr. Kevorkian story which I freelanced for Newsday for the first few days of Kevorkian's initial assisted suicide) and except for the $3,000 paycheck for a week's work, I was not overly impressed with the people I met on the New York end.
It is simply undeniable that most reporters at almost every daily in the country lean to the left. And it often shows in their work.
As I said before, not a criticism, just a fact.
There's is not funnier gaffe artist than Joe Biden, but most of the media gives him a pass.
Obama and McCain ran to Washington to hand out $700 billion to a bunch of rich bankers.
Nader said he would not have done it. Where was the media coverage of that?
It is why I "wasted" my vote on Nader.
But I'm glad you stopped by and left your opinion. I can always be wrong.
Jeff:
As to the 57 states slip-up by Obama.
I'm not buying the Islamic thing, I think he was just tired.
Not much into the conspiracy theory thing, but good to have you stop by.
I'm with you Jim.. I think he meant to say forty rather than fifty there.
Jeff
Jim, Your comments were spot-on. Nice job on a topic that few of us are willing to address.
Jim, I agree and it was fair and balanced
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