The media's ongoing contribution to the Obama reelection effort is fairly obvious: omit or downplay news stories and polling data that cast the Obama administration in a negative light while hyping trivial Romney gaffes or media-manufactured tempests-in-teapots in order to focus the election narrative on the Republican candidate's deficiencies - real or or imagined -- rather than the incumbent Democrat's record.
The Hill's Cameron Joseph is just the latest liberal journalist to follow this pattern in his September 18 piece, "GOP frets Romney is blowing the race." Of course, Joseph's idea of the GOP happens to unnamed Republican strategist in addition to Mark McKinnon, a squishy moderate who famously bowed out of the McCain campaign in 2008 because he couldn't bring himself to campaign against Obama.
“He's pushing independent voters out the door," Joseph quoted the "No Labels" co-founder. No Labels is A 501 (c) (4) group, which urges government to “stop fighting [and] start fixing.” McKinnon is not a die-hard Republican partisan, he's a former Bush Democrat-turned-Republican who spends his time lecturing the GOP that it is too conservative for Americans' taste -- even though the 2010 midterms and the viability of the Tea Party proves otherwise.
Cameron also turned to New York Times token "conservative" David Brooks to further push the notion that Romney misspoke:
New York Times columnist David Brooks in a harsh critique of Romney said his comments suggest “he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?” He added: “It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.”
That’s one way to look at it. Although, it could be what John Sununu also said yesterday – which is the “… liberal media…is looking for the tiniest little wart that they can blow up into a giant cancer" against Romney.
Indeed, Sununu's explanation makes perfect sense, especially since there's troubling polling data for President Obama that the media either are ignoring or downplaying. For example, as Patrick Goodenough of our sister organization CNSNews.com noted today:
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found the president’s foreign policy approval among registered voters at 49 percent, down from 54 percent one month earlier."The fall was steeper among independents, going from 53 percent in August to 41 percent," NBC reported.
So independents are particularly worried about Obama's handling of foreign policy, and yet last week the media wouldn't shut up about how Romney had goofed with the timing of his criticism of the Obama State Department's handling of the protests in Cairo.
This week, thanks to a leaked video from a private fundraiser, the media have shifted from attacking Romney over his supposed gaffe to attacking him once again as out of touch with middle-class voters, even as they ignore the president's economic record.
