Dan

Calabrese

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November 6, 2008

Media Finally Gets Its Man, But How Long Will the Love Affair Last?

Congratulations are due to President-elect Barack Obama, but as we hand out the kudos, it would be wrong to leave out the mainstream media, which finally succeeded after two consecutive failures to put its preferred candidate over the top and into the White House.

By simultaneously protecting and covering for Obama, while treating every McCain criticism of him as a campaign strategy scandal, the MSM clearly played a huge role in creating Obama’s mythical image and helping to sell him to an electorate willing to believe in some sort of mystical messiah.

So you might think we can expect the same MSM to shower the new president with fawning coverage – continuing to obscure his most radical policies and decisions while treating as suspects those who criticize him. You might think that. And Obama might be counting on it. But you’d both be wrong.

Sure, the media are in love with Obama now. He provided them with a great story – the first black president – and he served as the antidote to the prospect of another Republican president. Let’s get real here – the MSM have little use for Republicans. So his victory gave them the opportunity to publish hype-worthy front pages and wax on about how history was made. They love that stuff.

But as badly as the MSM wanted to help elect a Democratic president – and make no mistake, they wanted it really bad – it would be naïve to think they’ll be happy spending the next four years merely cheerleading for Obama and his policies.

Reporters like conflict and intrigue. They love investigations, even when the investigations are ridiculous and baseless, because it lets them say they are “holding the powerful accountable” or some such blather. Most reporters are liberals, so when a Republican is in the White House, they find it easy to do their speak-truth-to-power routine while also satisfying their ideological predilections.

But Republicans in Washington are about to shrink to the size of a pea. They will have about as much influence as Derek Jeter at a Red Sox fan convention. If you think the media will be satisfied merely scrutinizing Mitch McConnell’s attempts to hold filibusters together, you don’t know them very well. Even though they vote Democratic in huge numbers, they make their living reporting interesting stories, and repeating the talking points of the administration is not going to keep them professionally fulfilled.

At some point, the MSM is going to turn adversarial toward the Obama Administration. This will happen partly because they will come under pressure from conservative talk radio programs (assuming the Fairness Doctrine doesn’t return to obliterate them) and right-wing blogs. These new media will only grow in importance under the new Democrat-dominated Washington, and every time the MSM fail to thoroughly report the potential pitfalls of an Obama decision or policy, the conservative new media will be merciless.

But even without that pressure, they would do it because they simply won’t find it gratifying not to. With no powerful Republicans in Washington to scrutinize, they will have to either turn on the president or accept life as his happily barking lapdogs. No matter how liberal most of them are, journalists don’t have it in their DNA to be anyone’s lapdogs.

There are some indications that this is already starting. The reporters who accompanied Obama on his campaign plane were known to complain that he was aloof and only let them have access to him in hyper-controlled situations. They were still rooting for him to win, but they were put off by him personally and didn’t like how difficult he made it for them to get a sense of him.

Is Obama prepared for the day when his media benefactors turn on him? I wonder. Clearly, he values the control and presentation of his own image very highly. Most reporters can’t stand people like that. This is why they used to love John McCain so much, because he would sit around and gab informally with them. (Well, that and because he would rip his fellow Republicans for attribution.) By all accounts, Obama does not have a natural sense of humor and doesn’t easily loosen up around people.

During the campaign, the media covered for Obama when he pretended welfare checks were “tax cuts,” and when an ordinary citizen asked Obama a very good question about his tax proposals, the media provided Obama with cover by going after the citizen.

But when Obama becomes president, these won’t be mere campaign platforms. They’ll be actual policy proposals, with real implications for the nation. Will the MSM still cover for the new president when his misleading words have real implications for the lives of their audience? Given their track record to date, Obama may very well think that they will.

The bet here is that he’s in for a rude awakening. They need someone to go after, and with Republicans reduced to Capitol Hill window dressing, Obama himself will become the biggest target.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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