Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer reports today on the Obama White House’s pushback ops against bogus press coverage. Apparently, after a long, nasty campaign full of media-fueled attacks and a post inauguration D.C. press corps that is largely inept at correcting misinformation, Team Obama has finally decided it’s time to get aggressive. But in his write-up, Scherer offers a revealing picture into the mind of a Villager:
The take-no-prisoners turn has come as a surprise to some in the press, considering the largely favorable coverage that candidate Obama received last fall and given the President's vows to lower the rhetorical temperature in Washington and not pay attention to cable hyperbole. Instead, the White House blog now issues regular denunciations of the Administration's critics, including a recent post that announced "Fox lies" and suggested that the cable network was unpatriotic for criticizing Obama's 2016 Olympics effort.It’s slightly troubling that the “press-loved-Obama-during-the-2008-campaign” meme has basically now become conventional wisdom (thanks Bernie Goldberg). Yes, there is some data available to suggest that this is the case, but no scientific method is going to take into account the subjective effects of 4 straight weeks of “Reverend Wright, Reverend Wright, Reverend Wright,” a whisper campaign that Obama is a Muslim, or other instances of outrageous media coverage. But the more troubling point is this: Even if it is true that Obama received “largely favorable coverage” during the campaign, why on earth is Scherer “surprised” that the Obama White House is taking on, what can arguably be said to be, unprecedented unfavorable media coverage? It’s as if Scherer expects Obama to say to his staff, “Hey alright everybody, let’s just hang back and let them spread false attacks on us, the press were nice to us during the campaign.” That kind of quid pro quo expectation is bad for journalism and bad for democracy.
