Tag Results for Barack Obama

It was a whirlwind media story combining race, politics, overreaction and poor reporting.  Why did the Sherrod case touch off such a firestorm? 

The Daily Caller has a post today exposing how writers for publications including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, and the Baltimore Sun "took radical steps" in 2008 to protect then-candidate Barack Obama from the growing scandal over statements by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Watching the whistle get blown on a bunch of lefty partisans masquerading as "journalists," one wonders the following about any group of media types - editorialists or not, of the left or the right - who would engage in a group effort to inoculate a political candidate from legitimate scrutiny and plot to defame fellow "journalists" along the way.

Are they insane? How do they manage to have so much time on their hands? And do they realize how foolish they look in light of the fact that Obama's effective handling of those oh-so-reprehensible questions about the Jeremiah Wright affair may have been his single most important instance of vetting with voters en route to the presidency?

The always-lively segment where our panelists bring a variety of their own short topics to the discussion. This week's rants and raves: Politico claims President Obama is flirting with a "failed presidency"; the Attleboro Sun Chronicle charges online users a fee to post comments; network coverage of the BP oil spill; the John Edwards story gets the Hollywood treatment; and Sarah Palin's savvy handling of Levi Johnston and Briston Palin's news;

Thanks to Greg Mitchell’s Twitter feed, I know far more about the New York Times/CBS News poll of tea-party supporters than I would have if I’d relied solely on the Times’ polite take. (The Times does better with an interactive presentation of the complete results.) What you really want to do is check out CBS News’ coverage, starting here. A few findings that are worth pondering:

• Fewer than half — 41 percent — believe President Obama was born in the United States. Thirty percent flatly declare that Obama was born in another country, and another 29 percent don’t know. In other words, 59 percent of tea-partiers are either hard-core or soft-core birthers.
• Then again, 32 percent of Republicans believe Obama was born in another country.
• Eighteen percent of Americans identify with the tea-party movement, and just one percent of them are black. Not surprisingly, 52 percent of this overwhelmingly white group say that too much is made of the problems facing black people, and one-fourth believe the Obama administration favors blacks over whites.
• Fifty-four percent are Republicans, and 41 percent are independents. Given that 73 percent say they’re conservatives, it stands to reason that most of the independents are politically to the right of where they perceive the Republican Party to be. Just 5 percent say they are Democrats.
• Sixty-four percent believe a flat-out falsehood (other than the birther falsehood): that taxes for most Americans have risen during the Obama presidency. In fact, they have fallen.
• And here’s the explanation: 63 percent say they get most of their news from the Fox News Channel, and large majorities hold favorable view of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.
• While anger is a prime motivating factor, tea-party “activists” turn out to be even angrier than mere supporters: 72 percent of activists are mad as hell, compared to 53 percent of supporters.

Conclusion: Anyone who thinks the tea-party movement isn’t motivated by racial fears is deluding him- or herself.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

"Beat the Press" panelists sound off on their rants and raves of the week: the executive bonuses of New York Times executives are released; CBS's softball interview with President Obama; the Cleveland Plain Dealer releases the name of an anonymous poster and a public servant; Sarah Palin draws fire from a pair of musicians; and News Corp. puts up pay walls for online content.

Civil War: Washington Post columnist David Broder slammed colleague Dana Millbank for a column that characterized President Obama as a dope for not following Rahm Emmanuel's advice. Millbank insists that the column wasn't an Emmanuel plant, but the dustup has the Post airing it's dirty linen in public. Again.

The Beat the Press panel offer their own rants and raves about the media this week - including WCVB-Channel 5’s handling of the Gail Huff-Scott Brown marriage; fallout from the NBC late night feud between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien; Google's decision to no longer support China's censoring of searches; and media comparisons between former President Bush's response to Hurrican Katrina and President Obama's response to the Haiti earthquake.

Fresh off our "Beat the Press" discussion Friday about the wisdom - or lack thereof - of the Obama administration's decision to take on Fox News, the president's proxies took to the airwaves again on Sunday. In the process, they revealed a strategy that is perhaps more nuanced than we thought.

Simultaneously (at least in Boston), Senior Advisor David Axelrod appeared on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" while Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel spoke with CNN's John King on "State of the Union," reports TVNewser, which has posted video clips from both appearances. Both men, higher on the White House food chain than communications director Anita Dunn, reinforced Dunn's charge that Fox is basically the research and communications arm of the Republican Party.

Yet Alexrod also made clear that the Obama White House will continue to engage with Fox even as it calls the network out, saying: "We're going to appear on their shows." Alexrod also tried to drive a wedge between Fox and other media outlets, saying that Fox's programming is "not really news" and admonishing Stephanopoulos and ABC "that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way."

Emanuel also hit on the wedge theme on King's show, saying the White House didn't want Fox's agenda advocacy setting the journalistic pace for "the CNN's and the others in the world."  Emanuel also tried to put the Obama vs. Fox White House dustup and in perspective, saying "the concentration of the White House" was on things like the economy, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not O'Reilly, Hannity, and Beck.

What seems increasingly clear is that the White House sees now sees Fox as acting like the neighborhood bully - the more outrageous statements Fox commentators get away with (Obama is a "racist" etc.), the more they feel emboldened to make even more outrageous ones. So if ignoring Rupert Murdoch's network isn't going to make it go away, the best White House strategists believe they can do is to actively stand up to Fox, while shaming other networks into rejecting its brand of nakedly partisan journalism.

In short, if the White House is picking a fight it can't win, it's because it doesn't view "winning" as an achievable outcome. Instead, isolating and managing Fox appears to be the goal, and even that is certain to be a tall order.

What do you think?

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said this week that Fox News is “not a news network at this point” and “a wing of the Republican Party.”  Why the war of words and how might it impact other news divisions?

On Thursday, the Secret Service reported a teenager was behind the widely-reported Facebook poll on a threat against the President. The teen told the agents it was a mistake. Why was it even reported in the first place?