Victor Davis Hanson has his own prognostications for the future of journalism about Obama.
There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama’s unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won’t work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?
Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public’s, “Why should we begin believing you now?” or “Why didn’t you tell this before?”, or (2), They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign. They will lose either way and remain without credibility.
In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
As I’ve said before, I think not knowing what to do about its credibility problem won’t stop major media from trying to salvage it the only way they know how, by doing “tough investigative reporting” on Obama. I don’t expect any serious challenges to fundamentally leftist policy, but I expect the airing of embarrassing leaks, and a LOT of investigations that should have been aired before the election.
It’s not that I expect the major media to suddenly get flint-eyed about Obama’s known past alliances, like Ayers, Wright, Resko, etc. That would be just a bit too hard to stomach, even for them. But does anyone think these are the ONLY possible problems in Obama’s past, and that he’ll be able to change his spots overnight?
The press didn’t adequately investigate the whole Jennifer Flowers mess in the runup to Clinton’s election, and so they couldn’t really go back to it, but were more than happy to report on all the “bimbo eruptions” that followed. Similarly, I’m guessing that Obama is going to have some problems that, in hindsight, will be seen as parallel to his known issues with past alliances, but will be “new” information that the press can latch onto and report, more in sorrow than in anger. My reason for believing this is simple: there is just too much we don’t know, and haven’t been able to learn, about Obama’s past or, for that matter, present associations and alliances and positions and products. It is more than passing strange that no one can find a paper he wrote, a brief he prepared, an article he wrote, etc., from his college or law school days, or from his days as a lawyer. Sooner later, someone is going to leak some of that stuff, after they are stiffed by him, or decide he isn’t the Second Coming after all.
And then there are those videos and audio recordings that are bound to come out, sooner or later. I expect the leaker to be a former ally with animus to burn. Or, it could be people in the “civil rights industry” who see their power base eroding in supposedly “post-racial” times.
