Redstate

By Dave in Fla Posted in Elections — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I am by nature a curious person. For awhile now I’ve been listening to and accepting the general impression we all have that the main stream media is completely in the tank for Obama. Let’s face it, given the number of differing positions and outrageous statements made, and the collective resulting silence, it is an easy conclusion to draw. But a recent blog entry about the Washington Post criticizing Obama for not participating in townhall debates with McCain piqued my interest (h/t Bill Dupray) regarding their coverage.

This was the third time in the last few weeks that I could personally remember the Washington Post acting like a real newspaper (as opposed to an echo chamber for Chris Matthews). The Washington Post was my hometown paper for many years and I followed the Redskins in their pages religiously (the Tony Kornheiser Bandwagon in 1992 was a weekly must read for everyone in town). Since I still remember opening the editorial page in 1984 and seeing the words “No Endorsement” telling me that Reagan would win the election in a landslide, I was curious if we might be seeing the beginnings of a similar phenomenon in this election.

The Washington Post doesn’t seem to have been a big supporter of Obama from the beginning. Note this quote from an article in October:

Sen. Barack Obama yesterday slammed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for "ducking the issue" of ensuring the solvency of Social Security and signaled that he will take a more aggressive approach to the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Note the use of two journalistic devices in this quote. First, Obama “slammed” Clinton, rather than “criticizing” her. Second, the use of the “dismissive quote” used to imply that the author (and by extension the editorial staff) does not agree with the premise of Obama’s criticism. The sentence would have read correctly written as “for avoiding the issue of ensuring” and been a neutral reporting of the facts. I’ll leave the irony of Obama making accusations of “ducking” an issue to others to savor.

For comparison, let’s take a look at a more recent quote from the Post from June 4th:

Republican Sen. John McCain wasted no time Tuesday night in launching his first general-election broadside against Sen. Barack Obama, casting the Democrat as an out-of-touch liberal who offers a false promise of change.

Notice what is missing from this quote? That is right, there are no “dismissive quotes” in this paragraph. This could easily have been written as Democrat as an “out-of-touch liberal” who offers a “false promise” of change.

We can also look at the specific content of the articles that the Post has been writing, rather than parsing the editorial differences. From June 11th:

James A. Johnson has given up his role as the head of Sen. Barack Obama's vice presidential search team. The former Fannie Mae CEO has drawn heavy criticism from Republicans in recent days for favorable mortgages he received from beleaguered subprime lender Countrywide Financial Corp.
…
Johnson is the quintessential Washington insider and also vetted presidential picks for John Kerry and Walter Mondale. But his extensive business ties, and in particular his tenure at Fannie Mae, made him a lightening rod for Republicans, who stand ready to pounce at any sign that Obama is breaking his pledge to rid politics of cronyism and special interest influence.

Not much equivocation in that analysis, is there? Nothing to soften the damage to Obama in this reporting. How about the coverage by their columnists? Here is Howard Kurtz today:

Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban.

Oh, I'm sorry. He didn't change his position, apparently. He reworded a clumsy statement.

Ouch! That had to leave a mark. Here are the opening paragraphs of an article on June 23rd by Dan Balz and Anne Kornblut (two of bigger liberals in the Post’s stable):

In the opening weeks of the general-election campaign, Sen. Barack Obama has moved aggressively to shape his campaign and offered a clear road map for the kind of candidate he is likely to become in the months ahead: an ambitious gamer of the electoral map, a ruthless fundraiser and a scrupulous manager of his own biography in the face of persistent concerns about how he is perceived.

Obama's early maneuvers suggest a clear understanding within the campaign of his strengths and weaknesses. He bought air time in 18 states, a sure sign that he hopes to expand Democrats' traditional electoral map. He opted out of the public campaign-financing system -- revealing his determination to press his financial advantage, even at the cost of handing his Republican opponent the opportunity to raise questions about the sincerity of his rhetoric on reform.

I added the bolding to point out an interesting use of language by the journalists. As the Obamessiah has told us, “words matter”. These are not the words of hope and change. In fact, even the positive words of praise in this article do not include the Obama message keywords of “Hope” and “Change”. Someone isn’t sticking to the Obama script here. Then we have the June 20th Post editorial. We don’t even need to look at the content, the title says it all:

The Politics of Spare Change
Even $85 million wasn't enough to get Barack Obama to keep his promise.

Finally, we have the editorial from today:

The sooner the sniping stops and the serious discussion starts, the better off the country will be -- and the best way to achieve that would be for the candidates to meet, one-on-one, as often as possible. Mr. McCain's proposal to hold weekly town hall meetings was -- as the Obama campaign said -- "appealing." That was more than three weeks ago. Since then, the Obama campaign has countered with the offer of a single town hall meeting, on nobody-will-be-watching July 4, and a second debate on foreign policy -- this in addition to the three traditional fall debates. Mr. Obama has written that "one of my favorite tasks of being a senator is hosting town hall meetings." He launched his campaign decrying "the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial." Now, he should seize the opportunity to practice the change he preaches.

In addition to being a nicely worded way of calling Obama a coward, notice that the “dismissive quotes” are being used to throw his words back into his face. This is the editorial equivalent of kicking sand in his face and calling him a sissy.

While sticking the word “Obama” in the Washington Post search engine is enough to find plenty of fawning coverage (yes Eugene Robinson, I’m talking about you), I find the cracks in the monolithic shell of invulnerability fascinating. And it seems to be spreading to other papers that don’t use the AP as their sole news source. The Boston Globe also has a big article today about the failure of Obama’s signature housing project. There is clearly something going on here.