Thomas Friedman re Obama’s “vetting” by media during his campaign in 2008
During the 2008 presidential election season, many Americans were captivated by then-candidate Barack Obama’s promises of hope and change. And some would argue that much of the media were taken in by the promises too. Nearly three years into the Obama presidency, is it fair to say the media were duped?
On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Howard Kurtz asked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman just that question. According to Friedman, the jury is still out.
“Way too soon to tell that kind of thing, I think,” Friedman said. “I think if, look, what have I been calling for, you know, the president to have, I think there is, we just so desperately needed a grand bargain that involves restructuring of debt, raising of taxes, cutting of spending and investing in the sources of our strengths as a country from everything from infrastructure to government-funded research to education. It’s so clear that’s what we need. My personal frustration with Obama has been that while he certainly tried that grand bargain for a little bit, it just kind of went away. Well, it didn’t on the work. He said [House Speaker John] Boehner backed out. I don’t know who backed out.”
Kurtz pointed out that Friedman had an unusual closeness with Obama as one of his golfing partners. Friedman said that was a benefit.
“Yeah, anytime you spend four hours with the president, either with a spoon in your hand or a golf club in your hand or nothing in your hand, you learn something,” Friedman said. “If he invites you to lunch, anytime you get a chance to talk to the president, in any context, I find incredibly beneficial.”
Yeah, Tom, sure.
Anyone who thinks the media even looked at Obama crosswise during the 2008 election cycle is either deluded or covering up… or just incredibly uninformed. The media covered up for him, literally, by burying stories that might have told some inconvenient truth about him, by substituting puff-pieces for actual investigative journalism, and by throwing up mud at his opponents, especially Sarah Palin.
John Ziegler’s movie Media Malpractice tells the whole story. Here is info on how to get the DVD, or you can just catch it on Netflix.
Full disclosure: I composed the music for the movie. But I would not have done so if I hadn’t agreed with its message.
The remaining question: will the media do any better in 2012? I used to think they’d eventually become embarrassed by their non-performance of journalistic duty in 2008 and backtrack a bit. But with the media continuing to release White House spin as news, I’m having my doubts about it. I’d guess that even if Obama’s approval rating continues to nosedive, the media, who simply can’t stand a Republican (even a “center-right” one) in the White House, will still try to carry the flailing Obama over the finish line…. again.
August 24th, 2011 5:01 pm
Umm just curious, why do we utilize the what-we-just-proved-as-untrustworthy media to research, publish and broadcast claims of media bias?…based on the facts of course: evidence faithfully reported by said same so-called double-dealing media? Hmm… Maybe everybody’s just unwittingly lying about a lie about a lie about a lie about a lie… And how come a liberal never claims liberal bias (or a conservative, conservative bias)? I’d be proud to be the favored winner all the time, wouldn’t you?
You describe the media as some sort of spontaneous but coordinated body of conspiracy, yet you’re much too intelligent to believe that. The media doing better? The media looked like…? The media hates…? And of course your side claims that the other side incessantly claims that your side is claiming media bias towards them just as a ruse to distract from the true media bias towards you (follow that?).
There’s no such thing as an unbiased recording of fact. Especially when you try to use facts to prove something objectively that you strongly believe in subjectively. Now the original facts have been biased, haven’t they? So what. That’s what people use the media for.
Yeah I know, here I go again, callin ’em like I see ’em. Stuck in the middle promoting my own indecisiveness; blind to the real truth of the matter, right miner? OK, here’s the true conspiracy: the Illuminati is trying to get us to turn off all these prejudice news shows. MSNBC FOXNEWS: that’s obvious: byebye. ABCBSNBC you’re gone. CNNBBCNPR adios. Newspapers Websites Blogs: you’re all bigots, sayonara. Preach to your own choir, trust no one, read nothing. No opinions on anything, just like me.
August 24th, 2011 5:35 pm
Innermore, watch this and the following videos in the series (easy to find right there at the link), and read the book it describes (it is POLITICAL SCIENCE, not journalism, a brand new animal in this debate), and then we’ll talk. Media bias is real, it is mostly left, of course we have to use the media to talk about the media (what were you suggesting…. maybe telepathy?) and no, I never said there was a single, central, coordinated, conscious conspiracy on the part of all leftists in the media (which is to say most of it). It’s just in the culture, unmistakable, and unavoidable in the current setting.
And it matters. A lot. Your comment seems to me to bring up straw men and knock them down…. I suppose your mileage may vary.
What would you prefer I say instead of “the media”? Something like, “Reporters and producers and editors in print and broadcast mediums which are viewed by most Americans as being mainstream and are widely known in most households as common vendors of news and opinion”?
Come on. Shorthand exists, and is understood by all, except you, apparently, to be shorthand.
I don’t believe in “unbiased fact” either, except in circumstances that allow multiple confirmation by many witnesses of common observations. So the media (oh, shutup) should admit its bias, not pretend it doesn’t have it. Talk radio does. Fox opinion shows do. Fox news IS pretty balanced…. which is why, to the lefty media (which is most of it) Fox seems conservative. But Fox is just about dead center…. which is why its numbers are WAY up.
August 24th, 2011 7:15 pm
Here is a better link to the video I referenced in the last comment. It isn’t youtube, but it has the entire video, so you don’t have to look around for segments, and it has some nice introductory commentary, too.
August 27th, 2011 4:57 pm
Pretty good video. I’ve always thought that the reason why the American media tends to be liberal is because liberalism is generally simpler to understand than conservatism. It’s a quicker fix. Today’s casual thinker/listener has only enough time to intuitively emotionally receive an important news item or political topic, which fits the liberal profile to a tee. As well as network news production techniques, coincidentally. Policy arguments aside, I’m not saying liberals are stupid, it’s just that conservatism takes more thought. On some level, the liberal view is popular to The Audience, but not necessarily to The People, if you get my drift.
After watching tonight’s over-glitzed over-produced Evening News, most people are more likely to run out and listen to trance music for hours than running out and voting democrat. That’s really the point I was trying to make earlier (albeit sarcastically). Television news used to be subsidized by its network. Not anymore. So now the news is forced to be about who (or what) can generate the most attention = ratings = advertising revenue. That competitive pressure has created a new nauseating “style” of hardest hitting minimal content journalism. Mainstream news has become nothing more than an overly serious, hyper-hyped, star-studded, gossip Entertainment Tonight Show. In fact, have you noticed they never say, “thank you for inviting me to your program” anymore, it’s “thank you for inviting me to your show.”
The way I think the media has affected politics is very simple and scary powerful. Who’s getting the most votes? If your answer is republicans, democrats or independents, you’d be wrong. The winner in most elections is Mr. Nobody since the vast majority of the population doesn’t vote, because they can’t stand what they’re being forced to watch as news = media = politics = congress. Not only are most folks at least subliminally not interested in the souped up TV version of their country, they’re repulsed by it. As a result, if anyone votes it’s usually off the top of their heads. So: guess who’d win elections most of the time, or what type of person would be the most attracted to a career in journalism.
August 27th, 2011 7:13 pm
If you listen to that video carefully that I linked above, or check out the book with the author’s research, you’ll see that he ascribes about an 8% impact on elections from the left leaning media. That’s the margin for an awful lot of elections won by Democrat lefties.
If you add in the overall left leaning approach of most entertainment media (TV and movies and music) and people who “catch” their political perspective outside the “news environment” and still vote are being powerfully pushed left. See this. http://tinyurl.com/3fsrf65
Overall, combining these two influences, lefty news media and left entertainment media, I’d say the effect is at least 12% for the left, e.g., Democrats.
These two media types have tilted America away from the values in had in 1950 in a hugely powerful way. I’m not suggesting some kind of “government” fix, as if such would ever be tried, or would work IF tried (although the left has done a good job of twisting election/campaign finance law to favor the left). But we just have to keep making the point, and hope people catch on that they’re being manipulated in ways they may not be aware of.
August 28th, 2011 8:17 am
Nostalgia is a shaky premise. The values of the 1950’s should only apply to the 1950’s. Nostalgists have been arguing for their eras for eras.
I think the “tilting” or “straightening” of America is way overblown by a small over-grandiose political establishment (mainly in NY and DC), overhyped by a pervasive profit-driven news media (mainly in NY and LA) so this little group of salesmen can feel important and powerful. The “Mr. Nobody” population, which is the majority, isn’t impressed. We’re way too busy accumulating possessions to be manipulated into leftys or rightys, changing the culture or saving democracy or whatever.
People would be more interested in changing all this stuff if it were brought back down to earth.
August 28th, 2011 12:06 pm
Innermore, is your “nostalgia” comment intended to invalidate any observation based on negative historical change? That seems odd to me. Maybe it was just nostalgia that the Israelites had when Assyria carted them off, hmmm?
You seem also to be suggesting that it doesn’t really matter what government does, because you seem to be suggesting it doesn’t really matter what people think, and therefore how they vote.
You could not be more wrong. It is “brought back to Earth” when government policies destroy the economy. It is “brought back to Earth” when a few unelected cretins in black robes can decide it’s OK for a doctor to help a woman kill her unborn baby at pretty much anytime in the pregnancy, for pretty much any (non) reason. It is “brought back to Earth” when government fails in its basic obligations to protect our nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
How much farther “down to Earth” do you need for it to be before you acknowledge the travesty of how the media (both news and entertainment) have so distorted our national perceptions that we no longer can see what’s really happening, as a nation?
Your “Mr. Nobody” had better wake up and smell the coffee, while he can still afford a cup, and while there’s still a next generation willing and able to serve it up.
September 3rd, 2011 1:57 pm
Miner, how can I get through to you? Obviously I care passionately about what government does, and what the people think and vote. You are stuck on conservative vs. liberal, which makes you think that since I’m not, I must be a closet liberal who’s pompously “above it all.” I’m sorry you feel that way, but you’re wrong. And why does that make me uncaring or dispassionate, anyway?
What matters to me more at the moment is how everybody’s thoughts are routinely mischaracterized by the media. So much so, that most folks are too intellectually repulsed to care anymore. Actually, it seems only over-coached, pumped up extremists care, according to the media. One alternative I suggested was to try and get back down to earth, which mainly means trying to gain a wider perspective.
It’s not that the media’s own slanted perception isn’t an important issue. But we firstly should acknowledge how our media has horribly slanted our perceptions of each other, politically. So much so, that we have unknowingly been rendered incapable of seeing and correcting our own selfish ignorance. Therefore, we are unwittingly becoming more and more unqualified to do anything effectively to solve our problems. Not to say we should give up trying, but I certainly haven’t seen any progress in a very long time, have you? Please note: that’s not a slam on conservatism, liberalism, or our nation as a whole, like the media would commonly portray it. It’s a slam on our media. OK, apparently a liberal media. But buying into a counter “conservative” media that behaves mostly the same way doesn’t help either. I say that’s not “balancing things out” as much as it’s “hitting back”, which just further stifles everyone’s ability to think clearly and vote.
September 3rd, 2011 9:23 pm
Innermore, if you’d like to wait until that perfect media culture exists before you enter the fray and defend ideas and policies that you think are important, be my guest.
In the meantime, since that perfect media culture never existed, and never will, I will fight for things that I think matter. I will make cases that I think need to be made. I will point out media bias when I see it…. which is mostly, because the major media ARE so far left in the USA, and most other places where the media aren’t actually state run (there, the media slant depends on the state… but most of those are left, too).
Our founding fathers understood that media would ALWAYS be slanted… and decided the best way to handle it was to prevent the government from trying to do anything about it, and let the slants compete. YOU seem to be saying that you won’t get involved in the discussion until the media stops being slanted….
good luck with that
September 4th, 2011 9:24 am
Miner, if you’d like to fight for things that matter, inspired by a media culture that only profits from purposely maligning and flat out MAKING UP where passionate people like you (and I) are coming from, other than from some kind of Nazi camp, be my guest.
I’m not saying I refuse to participate, it’s just that the media has become so radically slanted that only extremists are ALLOWED to participate, and solely for entertainment purposes. Even if you are NOT an extremist, the media’s main job is to make you into one. That’s an insult to everyone’s freedom of speech, and I think I have entered “the fray” with both ears and some pretty strong opinions. Do you think I’m being facetious?
Want some more fray? How ’bout this. Since the Government cannot do anything about it (thank God), the powerful volatility of competing media slants has literally castrated the function of Government. By that I mean: no meaningful policy decision that you or I may be fighting for can possibly be made by our “government of the people” without the approval of the latest most dominant media impulse. That’s a serious insult to everyone’s freedom in general. I understand that the US media is “all we have”, but I strongly believe that the way it (dis)functions absolutely denies, or incapacitates, any communication remotely resembling an approximate representation of the American people. It seems you and I agree on that point at least, and I will vigorously defend that idea on small blogs like yours because I believe that these forums may be all that’s left. And that’s despite your occasional, mainstream media-influenced suggestions that I’m acting extremely indifferent.
September 4th, 2011 8:13 pm
Ummm… I can’t really tell, as if often the case, but Innermore, I think you may have just said about yourself the same I just said about you. But I’m not sure.
If you said you are disengaging from the wide cultural conversation because the game is rigged by the major media, then your self-assessment agrees with my comments in comment #9 above.
If you said you AREN’T disengaging from the wide cultural conversation even though the game is rigged by the major media, then why do you criticize every attempt I make to point out how rigged the game is, and to try to provide some small amount of balance?
I honestly can’t tell what you mean in the previous comment. Do we try to change people’s minds, or not? Do we try to educate them about the actual facts, as opposed to pure lefty media slant, or not?
YOU seem to describe everyone who doesn’t stand off and just watch the battle from some Olympian detachment as “lefty” or “righty”. I can’t tell if you even think there is any point in exercising free speech rights, since you believe it’s hopeless in the first place…. if I understand you.
do me a favor
Write a two sentence comment that has no potential for self-contradiction, which succinctly states whether or not you think there is any point in doing battle with the major media narrative about our culture, politics and economy.
I think I have no idea from what you’ve written about what you’ll actually say.
September 5th, 2011 2:37 pm
Obviously the mainstream media culture is biased so unhealthily to the left that it’s threatening our democracy. It’s also obvious to me, by the complete lack of positive results on our side in this battle, that narrowly pointing out that the media culture is just liberal isn’t a complete enough profile of them to successfully defeat them. ENGAGE THEM MORE.
Sorry, that’s 3 sentences.
I’m not criticizing your points about the rigged media, I’m criticizing your battle tactics. Instead of trying to change the audience’s minds, change the media culture first. I described the media culture, and what needs changing, in comment 4. Perhaps one quick way we could change their political behavior is by capitalistic means: don’t buy the extremism they’re selling. I admit that sounds vague and disengaging, but it really isn’t(?). How would you put it? I’m tired of just making points. Turn off the extreme behavior. That’s a battle I think is worth fighting.
When I was a copy writer/ad producer in radio, I learned this important rule. Professionals NEVER let their clients voice the spot. Thinking along the same vein: good journalists make horrible celebrities, honest politicians make awful actors, and political speech makes terribly dull copy.
The point is, I think the professionals have long struggled with the fact that real journalism was never meant for a fantasy medium like television in the first place, and vise-versa. TV pollutes the journalism culture with drive-by slanderers and hacks. Journalism pollutes the television media with reality show producers and Oprah. Because of this, I think ultimately (and practically) these industries, prodded by market pressure, should someday cancel all journalism shows and move the task of reporting the news back to the more scrutinizing medium of writing where it belongs. Conservatives, liberals and everyone in between need to URGE THEM TO DO THIS. Thanks to radio and the internet, that kind of action sounds like not too big of a stretch. Also due to the instant cross-referencing etc that the internet affords, the slanderers and liberal hacks won’t be getting away with it like they do on TV.
September 5th, 2011 3:00 pm
If all we’re having is a dispute over tactics to re-balance the media culture, I think it’s worth observing that Fox news is the biggest cable news outfit by far… they simply ATE CNN’s formerly dominant market share. No one else is even close.
Talk radio is a bigger and bigger piece of the pie.
Lefty newspapers are gradually dying, closing shops, reducing staff, losing circulation, you name it.
My opinion: in general, the motion that is happening in the media culture is back to the center, but it’s uneven, and not equally spread in all media. But it IS changing.
The thing to do now is to keep banging the drum, not feeling hopeless about it or disengaging from the battle.
September 6th, 2011 11:34 am
Foxnews has created a precedent that its competitors try to copy. The key un-copied part of their blueprint for success I applaud: moving the pendulum towards the center. It’s just all the other standard parts: the cheezy lighting and graphics, the poor copy reading and writing, the phony confrontational-ism, the gossip-ish trendiness of it all. It seems the more Foxnews grows, the more make-up they feel they need to put on. It’s gotten to where I just can’t watch it any longer than about 5 minutes (or its clones CNNMSNBCBSABCPBSBBC etc). But that’s just the producer in me that gets distracted easily by these things I guess. I’d rather read my news than watch it.
I hope I haven’t wasted too much of your time here. Carry on with your battle comrade. I hope the good fight isn’t lost in the glitter. Or your banging drum isn’t drowned out by the disco music.
September 6th, 2011 1:34 pm
Yah, I hear you about the production and over-hyped confrontational aspect of it all being too often more about the battle than the substance, with very little fact checking, and very little context, for that matter.
But that reflects the whole modern media saturated world we live in. We aren’t going back to the old days where a family evening was reading the classics by lamp light, taking turns, and doing the voices.
If the electorate was made up only of people who have a job and pay taxes, or at least people who did so for 40 years or so, it would be one thing.
But we’re at the “bread and circuses” point, where people who don’t produce are voting benefits to themselves. So we have to convince them that if they keep that up, they’re going to starve at some point, when the bank is truly broken. Those people aren’t convinced by reasonable discourse, but by emotional communication that gets their attention.
Sadly.
Marching onward.