Obama: Is the press on his side?

last updated 8 January 2015

“Ever since MSNBC’s Chris Matthews confessed that Barack Obama sent a ‘thrill’ up his leg,” said Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald, “we’ve known much of the media has been in the throes of Obamamania.” But last week, things really got out of hand when the media covered Obama’s overseas trip as if it were a cross between a coronation and the second coming. With hundreds of reporters chronicling Obama’s every utterance, with the three major networks’ top anchors on hand for any morsel Obama would bestow upon them, a casual observer would be forgiven for thinking John McCain had “already lost.” I believe this phenomenon already has a name, said John Kass in the Chicago Tribune. It’s called “liberal bias.”

Obama does get more coverage than McCain, said Steve Chapman, also in the Tribune, but not because most journalists are liberal. Obama is simply a far better story. A newcomer with just three years in the Senate, Obama beat the vaunted Clinton machine, and the fact that he’s the first black presidential nominee “gives him huge historical significance.” And even Obama’s critics acknowledge that he’s got the finest oratorical skills since Mario Cuomo and Ronald Reagan. Besides, said James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times, more coverage is not the same as “softer” coverage. The tired trope about “liberal media” notwithstanding, an analysis by George Mason University found that since June, ABC, NBC, and CBS actually were “tougher on Obama” than on McCain. Nearly three-quarters of the opinions the anchors and reporters voiced about Obama in recent weeks were negative.

If anything, said The New Republic in an editorial, McCain “should be happy” the press has been focused on Obama. Otherwise, more voters would have noticed that McCain has been a one-man gaffe machine, referring to a Pakistan-Iraq border that doesn’t exist and describing the Iraq war as the “first major conflict after 9/11,” neglecting to mention Afghanistan. His campaign has also been amateurish, offering such riveting tableaux as McCain’s visit to a grocery-store cheese aisle and his ride on a golf cart with fellow senior citizen George H.W. Bush. In any event, the Obama-press honeymoon seems to be over, said Gabriel Sherman, also in The New Republic. A growing chorus of reporters covering his campaign is complaining about his inaccessibility, his thin skin, and his “arrogance.” McCain once referred to the media as “his base.” If he plays his cards right, they could be his once again.