Howard Kurtz Scolds Media for Bashing Tea Party and Praising Obama
Howard Kurtz on Tuesday did something rather noteworthy two weeks before Election Day: he scolded the media's coverage of the Tea Party while at the same time bashed press members for excessively praising Barack Obama during the run-up to the previous elections.
This rare appearance of honesty about journalism's pathetic performance in the past three years makes "How the Media Blew the Midterms" an absolute must-read:
The media narrative by now is set in concrete: The voters are teed off, rising up, mad as hell and ready to wreak havoc.
There is a whiff, if you read between the lines, that the expected outcome is somehow unjust. The Democrats are going to get their backsides handed to them, in this telling, because the Obama administration has clumsily failed to explain what it’s done for the folks, and because of slightly scary passions unleashed by the Tea Party crazies.
The journalistic tone was somewhat different in 2006, when exasperated voters handed the House and Senate to the Dems, and 2008, when Barack Obama sold himself as a post-partisan savior.
Indeed. But this was just the beginning:
For Jano Cabrera, a Democratic strategist, the subject strikes a nerve. “My wife and I were having this very conversation,” he says. “When we were trying to seize power, we had justified anger, and now we talk about uninformed voters.” Obama inherited unprecedented challenges, Cabrera says, but in politics “you can’t go back and say it’s the other guy’s fault.”
Interesting that Kurtz would find a Democrat strategist not only agreeing with this being foolishness, but also willing to go on the record about it.
But there was still more:
In such a topsy-turvy season, one simple solution is…blaming the voters! They are so caught up in faulting Obama for everything but bad weather, so mesmerized by the right-wing noise machine that they can’t see straight. Yes, the refrain goes, high unemployment is heartbreaking, but do people really think they’re going to do better under Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell?
Small problem: These are the same voters who broke with more than two centuries of Oval Office white men by electing Obama. Weren’t many of us praising their judgment and tolerance then?
Indeed. The wave election of 2006 followed by Obama's ascendancy two years later met with with praise of the electorate by media members. The anger at Bush and Republicans was wise and to be commended as was the desire for change.
But now that such sentiments are being felt of a Democrat president and his Party, the electorate are suddenly ill-informed and racist.
As Kurtz noted, this double standard is not only obvious, but also quite preposterous of so-called journalists responsible for reporting the news and not their opinion of it.
On the other hand, as Kurtz noted in his conclusion, such ineptitude is quite common from today's advocacy media gang:
The biggest media blunder, in my view, was the walk-on-water coverage that Obama drew in 2007 and 2008. The only real debate was whether he was more like FDR (Time) or Lincoln (Newsweek). The candidate obviously played a role in creating his own myth, but it was the breathless media that sent expectations soaring into the stratosphere. Once Obama had to grapple with two wars, a crippled economy and reflexive Republican opposition, he had no place to go but down. The press has long since fallen out of love with the president, but the overheated hyperbole did him no favors.
Who’s to blame for the coming electoral tsunami? We ought to be careful about dumping on the most convenient scapegoat, those moronic voters. In politics, it’s not that complicated: you either deliver or you pay the price.
Seems simple, doesn't it - unless, of course, your biases as so strong that they cloud your ability to see the truth even when it's staring you in the face.
Nicely done, Howard. Bravo!
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Comments
Well, it's a start....
Submitted by Forbus on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:27am.
Agree with you, Howie, for the most part....although I wonder where you've been. But that line "the press has long since fallen out of love with the president" leads me to believe you've still got a long way to go.
In the vast majority of the
Submitted by Beukeboom on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:33am.
In the vast majority of the liberal MSM's eyes the Obama's can do no wrong. It's an astroturfed Camelot.
Obama Narrative Collapses
Submitted by pilsener on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 2:29pm.
Stephen Hunter, formerly of the Washington Post, wrote the following description of the media in his book I,Sniper:
“The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide ‘These are the lies we tell today.’ No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they’ve chosen to live their lives. It’s a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture.”
………………..
The Obama narrative is collapsing and the media is confused and searching for their new comfortable narrative.
I like Hunter's description
Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:46pm.
Bernard Goldberg -- a 20+ year veteran of TV rerporting on CBS News -- has described it similarly in his best-selling book Bias and his appearances on Fox News.
It's a narrow belief system held throughout most of the MSM through which the media observe a world with which they are not even remotely in touch with day-to-day. It became a sort of faith, and newcomers are indoctrinated by the older elite, who also determines who gets promoted and who does not mainly through the individuals' zeal in exhibiting that faith.
WOW! And this was on CNN too, not a blog.
Submitted by c5then on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:27am.
I never would have expected this from Kurtz. Kudos.
Maybe some of the journalists are feeling guilty and trying to repent of thier activism? One can only hope. Lets see if Kurtz is exciorated over this or not.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
He still gets a lot wrong,
Submitted by mattm on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:47am.
He still gets a lot wrong, but it is refreshing to see some small semblance of honesty from the LTM (libtard media)...
BTW- I do blame O-bum-a for the weather...didn't he say the sea levels would go down? Although you do have to give him credit for the weak hurricane seasons we've recently had.
BTW2- Evolution isn't a myth, it's just an unproven, untestable, unsubstantiated hypotheses which is unsupported by the evidence...
I honestly believe Kurtz
Submitted by Newsbusterbrown on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:49am.
I honestly believe Kurtz tries to be fair all of the time, but being a liberal is a hard handicap to overcome. :-)
Good job, Howie!
“There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” - Ronald Reagan (1964 Republican Convention)
A brickbat and a bouquet for Kurtz....
Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:52am.
First, the brickbat:
On the merits, journalists are right that Obama’s accomplishments have been minimized. Health care reform, however it pans out, was a huge achievement; the overall package remains unpopular, the individual parts (such as not excluding kids for preexisting conditions) not so much. Tightening financial regulation was a heavy lift against the forces of Wall Street. Even the much-derided stimulus law saved plenty of jobs. All that has been overshadowed because many voters believe the president bobbled the economy while setting his sights on social engineering.
No, Howard, the stimulus did NOT save plenty of jobs.
That's perpetuating the myth.
Also, the voters did not "believe." The KNEW that he was ignoring the economy in favor of social engineering. All that talk about how "green jobs" and health care reform were going to rev the economy and save us was NEVER believed by anyone outside the beltway.
And now the bouquet: his final graf:
Who’s to blame for the coming electoral tsunami? We ought to be careful about dumping on the most convenient scapegoat, those moronic voters. In politics, it’s not that complicated: you either deliver or you pay the price.
Well said.
Beware the Trojan horse...
Submitted by ML Stovall on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:33pm.
Beware the Trojan horse...
What inherent, unprecedented challenges?
Submitted by CobraMan on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:35pm.
"Obama inherited unprecedented challenges, Cabrera says"
Exactly what "unprecedented challenges" has Obama "inherited" that other Presidents haven't also inherited and/or faced?
Coming to office during the prosecution of two wars? Truman "inherited" that, and those wars were a hell of a lot more demanding, and damaging, to America than Iraq and Afghanistan. So, no inherited unprecedented challenge there.
Economic upheaval and unemployment? FDR "inherited" that and, like Truman, that "inheritance" was even worse than Obama's. So, no inherited unprecedented challenge there ether.
A Congress controlled by your fellow party members? That's hardly unprecedented, never mind not even being a challenge. So, once again, no inherited unprecedented there.
Being the first Black President? That's not something he inherited, it's something he actively sought. So, yet again, no inherited unprecedented challenge there.
Rapidly dwindling popularity? Oh, please, that's hardly unprecedented and he didn't inherent that unpopularity, he caused that himself.
I cant think of a singe inherited, unprecedented challenge that Obama is facing.
Please, can some liberal please tell me what inherited, unprecedented challenge is Obama really facing. I would really like to know.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
Maybe he's referring to
Submitted by ML Stovall on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:47pm.
Maybe he's referring to Obama's inheritance of an electorate of white racists that hates him....oh, wait...
Being the first "affirmative
Submitted by Francisco on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:50pm.
Being the first "affirmative action President" was bound to be an unprecedented challenge
Francisco, for Obama---
Submitted by matthewdean on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 11:29pm.
"Being the first "affirmative action president" would not have been an unprecedented challenge but for the sad basis behind Affirmative Action.
It is a program based on race, numbers, and feel good sensitivity, rather than intelligence, capability, experience, and worth.
Being a minority who touts his race as Black, when he is reportedly less than half so, points to Obama playing the race card to his advantage.
He was successful in that, but has obviously fallen far short in the office as regards experience. While he might possibly have been given an initial pass on that facet because no one has presidential experience going in, his time in office has most certainly demonstrated ineptitude caused by not only a lack of experience, but by a surfeit of arrogance in place of capability, and also by an intellect that appears to be far smaller than his worshipers would care to admit to.
Over all, Obama is exceptionally uninspiring to those of us who live in the workaday world, and has fallen unimaginably short by failing to measure up to the responsibilities required of such a powerful position.
As far as worth itself, it applies truthfully to Obama only if the letters l-e-s-s are added onto the end of the word.
The "unprecedented challenge" you spoke of was only minimally on Obamas shoulders; the majority of it belonged to his supporters.
By that I mean that it took a lot of white votes to elect a Black man, and that should have eliminated most of the deck of race cards.
The challenge, then, was whether or not Obama could be challenged on his policies and performance without his detractors being labeled racist.
Liberals, Democrats, and the main stream media have proven that not to be the case.
They, like their Messiah, have failed miserably.
MD
The media are canaries
Submitted by CO2Maker on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 12:53pm.
They're fickle, self-absorbed, self-referential, self-congratulating, and when they smell the whiff of gas in the air as the winds of change shift, they pivot as a group, like a flock of birds all wheeling around as a group, and run off in the new direction.
The rest of the media will soon be running the same story. They just have to get up from that receptive reclining pose on the floor.
Howard now covering his rear end
Submitted by philipjames on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:42pm.
Wait just a minute here.... Howard is the main stream media and I do not remember anytime during the last two years where he was sympathetic to the Tea Party or anyone associated with it. I remember the opposite. This is just Howard Kurtz trying to lay some groundwork to cover his big fat liberal behind because he too can see November from his house.
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