Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: yowolabi
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: yowolabi
You wanted the media to make stories up? When Obama's opponents push a negative story, the media reports on it. See plaigarism, Rezko, Michelle Obama being proud, him being inexperienced....
The media is lazy, plain and simple. They rarely do their own investigations and usually just report on things that are handed to them. If the media was uncritical, it's because nobody against Obama leveled any criticism at him. Blame his opponents for not going negative enough. Or better yet, blame Obama for keeping his nose clean and making it hard for anyone to find negative things about him that he didn't publish in his own book. Blame him also for going so positive that when his opponents attack him, it actually hurts their numbers.
If you disagree with what i'm saying, please point out the criticisms againt Obama that the media ignored. It's all good to say "the media should have been more critical", if you can name specific things they should have been critical about, but weren't.
Yes, I want them to 'make up stories', in the sense of doing their own investigations and covering the candidates in some equal manner, and reporting the info.
I'm referring to the long period until recently - they're just now starting a bit more negative, but even now, most of the stories I saw on plagiarism, for example, were of the sort of 'Clinton campaign denies it accused Obama of plagiarism', and stories similarly favorable to Obama; on inexperience, most raise the issue and then answer it in his favor, noting others' equal inexperience. I agree with you on the 'media is lazy' comment, but that's no excuse - the media should not rely on the candidates for negative stories about one another.
But you're missing the larger point - you talk about 'Obama keeping his nose clean', but it wasn't a dirty nose or his 'going negative' that made the media treat John Edwards like a nobody. It was the media's benefit from having the 'golden child story of Obama', it seems - stories that are marketable rather than ones serving the needs of democracy.
Just as with the 'Al Gore is a pathological liar' message the media bought into and repeated in 2000, they're not serving the public interest when they do this sort of thing.
And it's up to we voters to notice it and try to do something to get them to do better in the reporting.
Disclaimer: I'm currently favoring Obama of the current three candidates. As I said, it's not about him, it's about the media having inappropriate influence.
Vic said many of the same things I was going to say, so i'll piggyback off of him.
Vic knows that his past sins, from incivility to trolling and many others, led me to ask him not to read or respond to my posts (along with Jaskalas), and he does anyway.
I have invited anyone to bring up any point they want from his posts, and you're the first one to do so.
My take is that the media is equally lazy with everyone, so I don't find any fault with that. And truthfully, we don't know that people didn't investigate Obama and come up empty. I know some people tried to dig, and all they could come away with is that he wanted to be president in kindergarten, and his college roommates don't remember seeing him use the drugs he wrote about. You start from the premise that there must be dirt there that nobody dug up, which is not necessarily true.
Not really. My premise isn't that there's dirt, it's that the coverage, as I said, is effusive - while every other speaker at the 2004 convention was getting mixed to indifferent reviews if not criticism, Obama as I recall was praised unlike anyone else, and it seemed excessive at the time.
We all know the way the reporting can say the same thing different ways - a story can say Obama's eloquence left audience members in a frenzy, or it can ask questions about whether the frenzy is justified, for example or point out those who have a worse reaction to his speeches, it can focus on the positive energy or question the substance and lack of specifics, etc. It seems to me that it's fawning coverage to a huge extent.
Everybody isn't equal, so I don't see how the coverage can be.
I think I covered this exact issue in my Kennedy/Nixon comments. The coverage shouldn't be equal, but the rules of the game, the fairness, should be.
Before Obama's run for president, there was absolutely no reason to attack him.
Again, it's not about 'attacking him', it's about the effusive praise that implies his speeches are somehow among the best in the nation's history, with only the fawning praise out of proportion compared to the other politicians. I'm all in favor of that praise when it's justified - FDR, Churchill, JFK come to mind as great speakers - but it seems to be more positive than warranted regarding Obama, to me, a different *standard* for the comments for him.
I agree that Edwards was unfairly ignored, but that also had a lot to do with Edwards himself. Nobody wanted to hear about him.
And as I said, there's a chick and egg issue. The media doesn't cover him, making people less interested in him, making the media not cover him.
But the bottom line is that not giving him equal treatment not in the number of words written, but in the same fairness, harms our democracy - and gives the media power.
Remember that Edwards couldn't even generate enough enthusiasm and support to beat John freaking Kerry. Clearly, his opponents being black and a woman, are only part of the reason why he flopped with both the media and voters.
You say that as if coming in second place for the democratic nomination means he's a terrible politician. I disagree, I'd say that makes him a very able one. You don't say the silver medal winner at an Olympic event sucks. Edwards beat a whole lot of people to come in second, and there's a reason he did.
Again, please don't distort the issue and my comments by implying I'm saying second place deserves the same coverage as first - I'm saying it deserves the same standards applied, no 'golden child' mythology stories that serve the media's interests rather than democracy's.
I am in no way arguing that the media is perfectly balanced, but how can it be? The media is made up of human beings. I am arguing that they make a sincere effort though.
It gets frustrating issue after issue after issue for the same fallacious responses to get posted and need answers. *The issue is not the media being perfectly balanced*. That is a misrepresentation of the issue as some sort of nit-picking abouut tiny inevitable issues, when it's not that at all, it's about a huge, glaring effect having a major effect on our election. Stop the distorting.
What i'm also arguing is that the lack of criticism isn't of their own making. It's a symptom of Obama being clean, not being in the public eye that long, running a positive campaign, and not drawing much criticism from even his opponents. The biggest story about Obama is the growing support and enthusiasm he's been able to produce. How can you not lead with that? I just don't see how else the media could have handled this. They also didn't create the enthusiasm in his supporters, he did that himself through his speeches.
It's the way it's covered. I watch the films of the democratic candidates, and they all have clips of screaming, excited crowds to show. Usually that's expected and assumed, not the story; the story would be if they got booed or met with silence by their audiences. A book on Bush might comment: if 'neutral', that he ignored the contrary advice on an issue; if anti-Bush, that he made the mistake of not listening to the advice of others leading him to bad policies; if pro-Bush, that he was 'strong and resolute' in the face of misguided opponents. All are saying the same thing, in different ways. When one candidate gets all three types of comments, and another candidate gets only the positive type, that's an issue.
And it's more an issue when the public is affected by it and doesn't seem to realize it.
Your post is simply minimizing and distorting IMO the nature of the coverage issue, rather than discussing the issue, it's denying the coverage has any substantive difference.
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