Will the media judge Barack Obama on performance alone?
A reader who frequently challenges our fairness online and in print sent us an email link to article written by Juan Williams of National Public Radio. She says the article “should be required reading for all journalists.”
The article appears in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal section and is titled “Judge Obama on Performance Alone. Let’s not celebrate more ordinary speeches.”
In the article, Williams states:
“If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.
“Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.
“This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.”
At this point, I suspect most journalists are nodding in agreement: How obvious. But then Williams issues an indictment of the media’s past performance:
“During the Democrats’ primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.
“For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he’d long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.”
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
HA HA HA HA…. They can’t even challenge him on his citizenship status… They don’t even ask the simple questions like “where is your birth certificate?”.
I challenge Mr. Parker here to seek the truth about Obama’s birth place. Will he take up the challenge? It depends if he is a fair journalist or not.
Here’s a new poll question. Will Mr. Parker seek out documented proof of Obama’s birth place?
__ Yes
__ No
It doesn’t matter what Obama does over the next 4 years. He will still be put in a nice light by the media. The media put this man in office and they don’t want the backlash if he does a poor job.
…………..I had to vote NO on this one. The kowtowing job done by the media during the campaign would make me doubt it, but then the piece by Juan Williams gave me hope…hope for change….change that I can believe in…..We’ll see what happens with the media in a few more days, if the Obamaphoria subsides.
Think, I am willing to bet what is left of my meager life’s savings that neither Mr. Parker, nor any other so-called journalist in this country will investigate Mr. Obama’s birthplace nor ask why the Gov. of Alaska put it in a lockbox.
If the media does end up criticising Mr. Obama if necessary, then I say our country has finally trascended race and we live in a post-racial era.
The question presumes that there is such a thing as an unbiased observer. Which, of course, we know is totally hogwash. None of us, and no one else is truly impartial and unbiased.
The larger question is, will those who are demanding unbiased reporting willingly give up their own biases as they read or listen to the reports? Will you guys accept anything positive without an accusation of fawning? The best we can hope for is probably impossible these days. And that would be a vigorous press that is not driven by profit or ratings, and that would publish different perspectives and differing opinions on a more or less continual basis. As in, there is more to news reporting than reprinting the AP wire stories, rerunning the same CNN, CSPAN, or FOX recordings.
On the subject of the Birth Certificate, give it a rest. The courts have essentially ruled it’s a non-issue. The Hawaii Secretary of State’s office has gone on record as saying that the document does exist, and that it contains the required information, and it is properly sealed and stored in Honolulu. Personally, I’m not a conspiracy theorist on this or any other subject. Why? Because people talk. It’s almost impossible to maintain a conspiracy of silence or lies that would involve literally dozens or hundreds of people for any length of time at all. If you look closely at this story, you’ll find that all the Google hits you get all refer to the same one or two reports that are endlessly reprinted.
Though off-topic, I’d like to respond to two allegations or insinuations made by previous posters:
1) Whether Obama labeled himself as Black or African-American to earn “benefits” such as education. Unless I have misunderstood the poster’s intent–which is possible–the insinuation seems to be that he is an “Affirmative Action baby, that he did not “merit” his achievements. In response, I’ll point to the fact that Pres. Obama was not only selected to be on the Harvard Law Review–which is a highly competitive and coveted position in any law school, let alone Harvard–he was selected by his peers to be the Editor of the Law Review. In other words, his peers felt him worthy of having a position that aspiring lawyers would kill to have on their resume.
2) Whether Obama is truly an American citizen. The non-partisan Annenberg Political Factcheck debunked the claim that he is not a natural born citizen. You can find the story on his birth certificate and citizenship status here:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
and
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_barack_obama_have_kenyan_citizenship.html
And, keep in mind that this group debunks false claims of both political parties; in fact, during the 2004 VP debate, Dick Cheney favorably cited the website (although he incorrectly called it “Factcheck.com”).
hs — It is true that an individual will have their own biases and those biases will show through in the work in subtle ways. A person who is even heavily biased, but is in a position of doing a job where some objectivity is required can at least attempt to execute their job in an unbiased manner. What we see in the media today is that most journalists are biased to the left. If you had an more even balance of left/right biases, as a whole your product would have more credibility as an objective entity. Furthermore, there is little to no attempt by today’s journalist to present both sides of a story, even though it is their job to do so.
This natural born citizen issue is not trivial. I am finding it quite incredible that this basic requirement in the constitution is not formally enforced. All courts have refused to address the issue. The cases are being thrown out based on “standing”, but the main issue goes unresolved. My hope out of all this was that we would get a definitive ruling on Mr. Obama and that we would get clarification on how this constitutional requirement is actually enforced. From what I am hearing from you and others is that it is ridiculous to think that he would have gotten this far without it being discovered. You could also have said the same thing about Mr. Madof for all those years. If this constitutional requirement is not really enforced by anyone and we leave it up to politicians to police themselves, then we might as well burn that document.
If Obama gores your ox then you’ll hate him. As HS opined “we all live with our own bias”. I’ll say this about the media in general. It’s really hard to garner a conspiracy, so I don’t think it’s a conspiracy with the media. But I do believe it’s our media has a bias when reporting cause that Middle America find troublesome. We have the left coast and the right/left coast and then real people in the middle. Obama’s election was based on middle of America being tired of the 8 years of having their ox gored.
Remember this, he was elected by the majority of the people in America Whites, African Americans did’nt have enough votes to do so.
Okay then, let’s just suppose in this instance that Sarah Palin won the presidency and her birthplace was in question and was sealed in Alaska. Do you think the media would be so non-plused? Did you see how they ripped her a new one in the election? If Obama’s birth cert is in order, then just simply let us all see it and end the mystery. Wouldn’t that be the smarter thing to do then allow this question to hang over his presidency?
If that was me, I know that is what I would do. Should Mr. Obama risk having an asterisk next to his name in history? I think the bigger problem here is not his elegibility, but that we have not been allowed to view his birth certificate for confirmation of his elegibility.
The treatment of Obama has actually been similiar to when Bill Clinton won in 1992. Bill’s win was touted as a “mandate from the people” (I will never forget that phrase) even though he won less than 50% of the popular vote. Bill and Barrack both got free passes on a lot of things and their win was treated with rockstar status by the hollywood and media elite.
I understand the concern from some that people will twist critical comments about him into a race issue, but that should and can be fought by the media and America at large. It should not preclude the media from looking into things and criticizing Obama for things that he does. Their job still remains the same regardless of what other people do with the information.
However, given the left leanings of the media and the way they slobbered all over him the past few weeks I have no confidence that he will be hammered the way that Bush or Reagan were. They are giddy about him, and who wants to tear down that which they have helped to build up?