ELECTING AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT
FOR THE FIRST 220 YEARS OF THIS COUNTRY’S NATIONAL ELECTIONS, no major political party nominated a person of color for either president or vice president. That changed in 2008 when the Democrats not only placed an African American at the top of their ticket but also succeeded in electing him with a commanding 365 electoral votes to his opponent’s 173.
Several factors contributed to Barack Obama’s victory, including an extremely well run campaign, an unpopular Republican incumbent, and an economic meltdown that a critical mass of voters blamed on the Republican Party. But many observers pointed to another force as playing an instrumental role in Obama’s success as well: the American news media were smitten by him.
Time magazine’s senior political analyst stated, “It was extreme bias—extreme pro-Obama coverage,” and National Public Radio’s senior Washington editor said, “The media fell in love. There’s no question about it. He was a favorite—he was a favorite beyond favorites.” An ABC News reporter came to the same conclusion, characterizing the news media’s favoritism toward Obama as “appalling” and then saying, “Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates.” The Project for Excellence in Journalism also indicted the news media, documenting that Obama was consistently portrayed in a “favorable light” while John McCain, the Republican nominee, was cast in a “substantially negative one.”1
Creating a Modern-Day Messiah
The junior senator from Illinois moved onto the nation’s radar screen in 2004 when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. His speech was so impressive that the Washington Post published a story headlined “Barack Obama Is the Party’s New Phenom.”2
Four years later, MSNBC news analysts who reacted to the presidential candidate’s acceptance speech at the 2008 convention took a giant step beyond praising him when they anointed Obama a modern-day messiah. Keith Olbermann began the accolades by gushing, “For forty-two minutes, not a sour note—and spellbinding throughout.” Chris Matthews then moved the analysis into the biblical realm by comparing Obama’s speech to the others given earlier in the evening, saying, “In the Bible, they talk about Jesus serving the good wine last. I think the Democrats did the same.” In another hosanna to the nominee, Matthews stated point blank, “He inspires me.”3
That wasn’t the first time the American public had heard the Democratic candidate being described as a modern-day messiah, as Oprah Winfrey had done it a year earlier during a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa. The talk show host—and a source of news for millions of TV viewers—had formally endorsed her fellow African American by saying, “I am here to tell you, Iowa, he is The One.” Speaking in an excited tone designed to rouse the crowd, Winfrey then shouted, “He is The One—Barack Obama!” NBC later led its evening news program with a story about Winfrey promoting the Democratic candidate, including a clip in which she said, with great emotion, “For the first time, I’m stepping out of my pew because I’ve been inspired. Dr. King dreamed the dream, but we don’t just have to dream the dream anymore. We get to vote that dream into reality.”4
From the beginning of Obama’s campaign, journalists had failed to treat him with the detachment that’s supposed to be part of their job. Washington Post editor John Harris later recalled how reporters at the paper had reacted to the candidate soon after he announced he was in the race. “You would send a reporter out with Obama,” Harris said, “and it was like they needed to go through detox when they came back—‘Oh, he’s so impressive, he’s so charismatic.’” Harris then described how he and the other veteran editors responded to the star-struck reporters. “And we’re kind of like, ‘Down, boy.’”5
Campaigning for a Historic First
As to why the news media favored Obama, observers point—above all else—to the fact that having a candidate of color on the national ticket of a major political party was unprecedented. Reporters and others in the news business are always drawn to a big story, and this one was huge—electing him would be more enormous still.6
“The first African American serious contender for the presidency was a great story,” said Charlie Cook, a widely respected journalist who publishes the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “And a lot of people in the media absolutely loved it. I think you can say that the media had a finger—more than a finger—on the scale on the Democratic side.” Stuart Rothenberg, another longtime Washington journalist and founder of the Rothenberg Political Report, echoed that sentiment. “I agree completely with Charlie,” he said. “I’m sure journalists preferred Obama. They liked Obama. Obama got better treatment.”7
One occasion when news organizations pulled out all the stops in portraying Obama’s campaign as a history-making one came in June 2008 when he won a marathon primary battle to place his name—rather than New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s—at the top of the ticket. News outlets around the country made the unique nature of Obama’s success the focus of their coverage. The online magazine Slate splashed the single word “History!” above its story, while the Boston Globe highlighted the point in the first two words of its story, which read, “Making history and promising change for the future, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination last night.”8
© Action Sports Photography/Shutterstock
TV news also played up the historic angle. The night Obama secured enough delegates to defeat Clinton, NBC’s Tim Russert said, “Barack Obama, who says he’s a skinny black kid from the South Side of Chicago, has defeated the Clinton machine to be the first African American nominated for president by a major party. It is an extraordinary night.” Byron Pitts of CBS also veered away from the reporter’s role as detached observer when he said, “Barack Obama and his wife Michelle walked into history’s arms last night. One of America’s oldest and ugliest color lines has been broken, and there’s a new bridge for a new generation.”9
Online publications jumped on the let’s-make-history bandwagon as well. Early in the primary campaign when Obama bested his opponents in the Iowa caucuses, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington sounded more like a publicist than a journalist. “Even if your candidate didn’t win tonight, you have reason to celebrate. We all do,” she told her readers. “Barack Obama’s stirring victory in Iowa—down home, folksy, farm-fed, Midwestern and 92 percent white Iowa—says a lot about America.”10
The historic nature of Obama’s campaign spawned any number of articles based on interviews with African Americans about what his nomination meant to them on a personal level. A piece in USA Today, for example, quoted one woman who said, “This is up there with the Emancipation Proclamation,” and another who added, “We’re definitely tearing down a racial boundary that has existed for years. He’s really the new face of America.”11
By the fall, reporters were routinely using the three-word phrase “historic Obama campaign” in their stories. It’s impossible to gauge the impact of this element of the race, but there’s no question that it added a momentum to the Democrat’s quest for the White House that his Republican opponent didn’t enjoy.12
Supporting the First Internet President
Another reason many journalists backed Obama involved his comfort level with technology. In 2008, the Internet was in the midst of transforming the field of communication, and the thousands of reporters and editors on the front lines of that revolution appreciated that the tech-savvy Democratic candidate was on the vanguard with them. Indeed, many of them were tempted to join their non-journalistic techies and buy one of the baseball caps, sold on an enterprising website, that carried the slogan “Geeks for Obama ’08.”13
One memorable step Obama took to show how important technology had become was to announce his choice for vice president not at a news conference but via a text message sent to his supporters. The New York Times highlighted Obama’s method of communicating the news by showcasing his action in the lead paragraph of its story about who would be in the number-two spot. The piece also reproduced, word for word, the text message the Obama campaign had sent: “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”14
Another indication of the value the Democratic candidate placed on technology came when he created MyBarackObama.com. Affectionately known as MyBO, the website allowed supporters to build lists of like-minded friends, contribute blog posts, share photos, and—most important—meet fellow Obama fans in their area to organize local events and mobilize fund-raising efforts for their candidate. MyBO users could get text-message updates on their cell phones and download an Obama widget to stay current on campaign news.15
Obama’s campaign innovations vis-à-vis new media stood in stark contrast to his opponent’s position. McCain admitted, in fact, that he didn’t understand computers and couldn’t send an e-mail without help.16
The Washington Post was among the long list of news organizations that praised Obama and his staff for their tech savvy. “No other major campaign has put technology and the Internet at the heart of its operation,” the paper wrote. When the New York Times lauded Obama’s effective use of new media, it focused on his embracing of social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook. In March 2008, the Times reported, “Mr. Obama has about one million ‘friends’”—six times as many as McCain—and also told its readers, “A musical version of Mr. Obama’s campaign speech called ‘Yes We Can’ made by the singer will.i.am was released on YouTube. The video has been viewed more than 17 million times.”17
Other news voices also rushed to praise the Democrat’s use of new media. In January 2008, blogger Jeff Jarvis said on buzzmachine.com, “I wonder whether, quietly, Barack Obama is to become the first candidate elected by the Internet.” Wired, the bible of the tech world, reported that “The Obama campaign has the most sophisticated organizing apparatus of any presidential campaign in history.” Advertising Age wrote, “Digital tools have allowed the [Obama] campaign to communicate directly with voters on an unprecedented scale,” supporting that statement by pointing out that he’d raised a stunning $500 million through online donations.18
Downplaying a Questionable Relationship
The titans of American journalism demonstrated their fondness for the Democratic candidate not only by praising him but also by downplaying an issue that could have derailed his campaign: his relationship with his longtime pastor.19
Questions about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright surfaced in Rolling Stone in February 2007. The candidate had described Wright—who had officiated at Barack and Michelle Obama’s wedding and had baptized their two daughters—as his mentor. But Wright often dotted his sermons, the magazine reported, with incendiary statements such as “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!” and “We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. . . . And God has got to be SICK OF THIS SHIT!”20
Rolling Stone’s article had revealed that Obama’s pastor held radical views that were far outside those of mainstream America. And yet, after the magazine broke the story, the country’s major news outlets ignored it, with none of the leading newspapers or TV networks running follow-up stories.21
Unfortunately for Obama, the World Wide Web wasn’t so cooperative. Various sites aired video clips from Wright’s sermons, including the quote “No, no, no, not God bless America. God damn America!” Bloggers also picked up on the story, repeatedly asking questions such as: Why did Obama continue to be mentored by a man who made such inflammatory accusations against the United States? Why did Obama attend a church for twenty years that was led by a race-baiting demagogue? How could a candidate for president who refused to denounce Wright and his outlandish statements be considered a patriot?22
After the Wright story took fire on the web, the nation’s leading news organizations had no choice but to cover it. In mid-March, ABC finally aired a segment on Wright. Reporter Brian Ross focused much of his attention on a sermon in which Wright accused America of being under the influence of the Ku Klux Klan—the minister called the country the “U.S. of KKK-A.”23
Obama responded by delivering a high-profile speech on race relations that condemned the pastor’s views on race as a throwback to an earlier time. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor have the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews.”24
News organizations that previously had avoided talking about Jeremiah Wright now exploded with praise for how Obama had dealt with the issue. Leading the pack was the New York Times, which published an editorial—titled “Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage”—that compared the speech to inspirational addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. The Times described the Wright issue as a test of character for the candidate and concluded, “It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.”25
Minimizing a Major Weakness
When a detached observer assessed Obama’s qualifications to be president, his major weakness was that he possessed scant experience for the job. The news media dealt with this concern by burying it under a mountain of personal strengths they attributed to the candidate.
Obama had served less than four years in the US Senate, spending much of that time running for president, and six years in the Illinois senate. And so, even compared to other youthful presidents, Obama had a thin résumé. John Kennedy, for example, had served six years in the US House of Representatives and four in the US Senate, and Bill Clinton had been a governor for twelve years and, before that, a state attorney general for two.26
Criticism of Obama’s limited experience began during the primaries. Most famously, Joe Biden had said of his fellow Democrat during an early debate, “I think he can be ready. But right now, I don’t believe he is.” After Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Obama chose him to be the vice presidential nominee, the McCain campaign reminded the public of that earlier statement through TV ads. One warned voters that the country couldn’t afford to entrust its highest office to “one of the least experienced people ever to run for president.”27
When the country’s leading news voices made their editorial endorsements, however, they found Obama’s limited experience to be barely worth mentioning. The New York Times stated, “Senator Barack Obama has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president. Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change.” Other outlets pointed to additional attributes they saw in the Democratic candidate. The Los Angeles Times praised Obama for exhibiting “thoughtful calm and grace under pressure,” and Long Island’s Newsday lauded his “intellect,” “judgment,” and “uncommon ability to explain and inspire.”28
Most of the endorsements said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s brief résumé. When the point was mentioned, the reference was brief and followed immediately by more praise. The Houston Chronicle wrote, “It is true that Obama served less than a term in the U.S. Senate and that his previous elective experience is confined to the Illinois legislature. However, during that public service and his previous role as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago, he has developed an appreciation and understanding of the real-life concerns of middle- and low-income Americans.”29
Online publications generally didn’t endorse any presidential candidate, seeing the practice as too “old school.” Nevertheless, some of the most high-profile of the digital outlets made it clear that Obama was their man. For example, when former Secretary of State Colin Powell broke from the Republican Party and announced that he’d be voting for his fellow African American, the Huffington Post gave the news prominent play. The site first ran a story that quoted Powell as calling Obama a “transformational figure” and then kept Powell’s decision in the news by repeatedly publishing follow-up stories.30
Vilifying John McSame, John McOld, and John McOut of Touch
At the same time that the news media downplayed factors that could have derailed Obama’s quest for the White House, they gave ample and prominent coverage to the weaknesses of his Republican opponent.31
Many of the editorial endorsements of the Democratic candidate characterized his Republican rival as “John McSame”—in other words, saying that electing McCain would be tantamount to reelecting the unpopular George W. Bush to a third term. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, “McCain has yet to explain how most of his proposed policies and approaches differ from those of the current president,” and the New York Times said, “Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts.” Similar words came from the Boston Globe, which argued, “John McCain would try to solve the country’s problems by going back to the same Republican set of tools: tough talk abroad, tax cuts for the richest at home.”32
A second theme in McCain’s coverage was that he was too old to be president. “John McCain, 71, will be the oldest president ever elected if he goes on to win the White House in November,” Newsweek observed early in the campaign. The news weekly later continued the “John McOld” theme by running a piece titled “How Old Is Too Old?” The story stated, “While the old mandatory retirement age of 65 has been largely junked, there are still age limits for jobs like airline pilot or police officer, the kinds of jobs that require some of the same skills as the presidency—unwavering mental acuity and physical energy.” Time magazine weighed in on the “John McOld” theme, too, saying, “He has suffered serious skin cancers over the years,” and, “His age and health, therefore, are of legitimate concern to voters.”33
As damaging to McCain as what news outlets had to say about his age may have been how the topic was treated on The Daily Show. Jon Stewart commented, after one debate, that the Republican candidate had wandered across the stage while muttering to himself and searching for his little dog “Puddles”—a not-so-subtle suggestion that McCain was incontinent.34
A third McCain weakness gained prominence in the news media as the global economic crisis grew increasingly severe. The issue first arose in August 2008 when a reporter asked the candidate how many houses he owned. McCain failed to answer the question, saying, “I will have my staff get back to you on that.” Reporters instantly jumped on the comment, saying the answer was seven while also pointing out that many Americans weren’t able to pay their mortgage on even one house. This prompted journalists to add another denigrating nickname for McCain to their list: “McOut of Touch.” They slammed him again a month later when he said, as part of a much longer statement, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.” The treatment by CBS Evening News was typical, with anchor Katie Couric saying, “Despite Wall Street woes, John McCain said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And that prompted Barack Obama to mock him as out of touch.”35
The Pew Research Center analyzed news coverage of the campaign and found that the negative stories about McCain outnumbered the positive ones by a ratio of four to one.36
Playing Favorites in the Vice Presidential Race
When the presidential nominees chose their running mates, journalists again showed a clear preference for one candidate. They showered the Democratic nominee with praise while exposing the Republican nominee’s shortcomings.37
News organizations immediately embraced Joe Biden as a solid choice for the number-two spot. “Mr. Biden is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is familiar with foreign leaders and diplomats around the world,” reported the New York Times. The online publication Politico added that the Delaware senator’s other pluses included his “working-class roots” and his “36-year tenure in Washington.” RealClearPolitics made the case that Biden, unlike McCain, wasn’t a wealthy man but one who lived off his salary as a senator.38
© Everett Collection/Shutterstock
News outlets went a very different route when McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The New York Times called Palin’s selection “a desperate, cynical and dangerous choice,” saying McCain had tapped the first-term Alaska governor in hopes of capturing the votes of “disappointed supporters” of Hillary Clinton and in an effort to appeal to the socially conservative base of the Republican Party that he’d failed to capture up to that point. The online magazine Salon dismissed Palin as a “Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume.”39
Further evidence of the news media’s opposition to the candidate began when Politico reported that the Republican National Committee had spent $150,000 to spruce up the Palin family’s wardrobe. The McCain campaign tried to downplay the revelation as “trivial,” but journalists produced an avalanche of stories on the topic. Some publications highlighted details about the candidate’s purchases, such as the Daily Beast reporting, “Nearly half of that money was spent on a single shopping spree at a Minneapolis Neiman Marcus.” Other news venues stressed the political ramifications, with the Huffington Post writing, “It creates a huge PR headache for the McCain ticket as it seeks to make inroads among voters worried about the current economic crisis.”40
Raising Unrealistic Expectations?
Two weeks after Election Day, one of the country’s leading media reporters pointed out that journalists had played a role in getting candidate Obama elected but that their favorable coverage might ultimately work against President Obama succeeding. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post went on to say that the news media had created unrealistic expectations for the man who was about to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “Obama’s days of walking on water won’t last indefinitely,” Kurtz wrote. “His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.”41
Kurtz had it right.
News organizations that previously had been unstinting in their praise of Obama soon began criticizing him. The Huffington Post was one of the first; when Bill Maher said he wasn’t happy with the president’s lack of progress on climate change, the website gave prominent play to the late-night-TV host’s comment, “This is not what I voted for.” MSNBC news analysts were soon trashing Obama as well; after the president gave a speech about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Keith Olbermann dismissed the address as meaningless because it contained “nothing specific at all,” and Chris Matthews said it made him want to “barf.”42
The criticism escalated as Obama’s presidency continued. Politico made much of the fact that his pre–White House résumé had been so thin, saying, “Obama came to office with less executive experience—precisely none—than any president since Gerald Ford.” The online publication said this dearth of managerial expertise was one reason the rollout of Obamacare was a debacle, even though it was the president’s signature initiative. The New York Times was even tougher on the man it had favored during the campaign, sniping, “he may not always be as good at everything as he thinks he is” and “even those loyal to Mr. Obama say he tends to overestimate his capabilities.” The Times made those disparaging comments in a front-page story that railed against the president’s “unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington” and “his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.”43
Political historians weren’t surprised when the news media’s relationship with the president soured, as a similar process had played out many times in the previous two centuries. That is, the nation’s journalists often had reported when residents of the White House failed to deliver on the promises they’d made while campaigning. What was different this time, though, was the degree of disappointment that millions of Americans felt when the actions they’d been hoping for didn’t materialize. In this instance, the promises hadn’t been made merely by the candidate, which was expected, but also by the news media that had been so smitten.
The news media’s change of heart regarding The One became dramatically clear when he sought a second term. Several major papers that had endorsed Obama in 2008 gave their editorial support to Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. The Houston Chronicle: “We were captivated by the Illinois senator’s soaring rhetoric and energized by his promise to move American politics beyond partisan gridlock. It hasn’t happened.” The Des Moines Register: “Barack Obama rocketed to the presidency from relative obscurity with a theme of hope and change. A different reality has marked his presidency.” Newsday: “Had Barack Obama done the job of president with the same passion and vision he displayed in seeking it, he would likely deserve another term. He did not.”44
In explaining their decisions to oppose the president’s reelection, these papers focused much of their criticism on the country’s continued financial woes. The Chronicle, for example, said, “We do not believe four more years on the same plodding course toward economic recovery is the best path forward.” That wasn’t the only fault, however, that the journalistic voices pointed to. The Register denounced Obama’s inability to achieve any degree of bipartisanship, saying, “Early in his administration, the president reached out to Republicans but was rebuffed. Since then, he has abandoned the effort, and the partisan divide has hardened.” Newsday went beyond naming one or two failures and created a long list of what it called the president’s “broken promises,” including that Obama hadn’t carried through on his pledges to slow climate change, reform immigration policy, reduce the national debt, or increase government transparency.45
Because this chapter’s thesis is that the nation’s news outlets were overwhelmingly pro-Obama during the 2008 election campaign, it seems logical to ask whether that happened again when he sought reelection. The answer to that question, according to experts, is a resounding “No.” After studying the two elections, one political science scholar wrote, “Obama’s coverage in 2012 was notably less sympathetic than in 2008,” and the authors of a book about the Obama/Romney contest said, “News coverage of both candidates was balanced” and “Neither was covered more positively or negatively than the other.” Anyone who’s inclined to believe that news organizations learn from their past behavior, therefore, may conclude that journalists came to realize that they’d treated Obama too favorably during his initial race for the White House—and chose not to repeat their error four years later.46
