Don Campbell

“It took much too long for major news media outlets to appreciate the importance of the Wright connection” to Barack Obama, Don Campbell, who spent “nearly two decades as a Washington reporter, editor and columnist for Gannett Newspapers and USA Today,” asserted in a Wednesday op-ed piece for USA Today. The headline over the piece by Campbell, now journalism lecturer at Emory University in Atlanta, asked: “Wright story: What took so long?” Only after “the most incendiary clips...landed on YouTube” were the news media, Campbell observed, “dragged into the controversy holding their noses, but by then Obama had the goal line in sight.”

Nonetheless, Campbell contended “Obama has been ill-served by a press corps that seemingly was mesmerized by the large, frenzied crowds who turn out to see the Democratic rock star.” Indeed, “crowds can be deceiving,” as Campbell recalled: “McGovern, nobody's idea of a rock star, attracted huge and exuberant crowds throughout the fall of 1972 -- on his way to losing 49 states to Richard Nixon.”