Obama and the Media Dilemma [View All]

[babylonsister]

Obama and the Media Dilemma
by Robert Parry | February 17, 2009


It was only a few years ago – when the Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House – that the U.S. news media offered up one-sided coverage of the Bush administration, relying on Republicans, right-wingers and pro-war military experts to shape what Americans got to see and read.

The reason for marginalizing Democrats and other critical voices, we were told, was that the Republicans were in power and it made no sense to have on guests or to quote experts who didn’t share in the power. The premium was to have Republican insiders explaining what was going on.

So, one might have thought that when the Democrats won control of Congress and the White House, Republicans would largely disappear from the TV chat shows and the news pages. After all, the Republicans today have even fewer representatives in Washington than the Democrats did during most of the Bush years.

But if you thought that, you would be wrong. Instead, the cable networks and the print media have been falling over themselves to get the views of Republicans and to disseminate those opinions widely to the American public.

During a key early stage in the battle over Barack Obama’s stimulus bill, the Center for American Progress examined the political affiliations of guests on major cable networks and found that Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 2-to-1. Suddenly, the premium was on the views of those out of power.

In other words, Republicans get to dominate the news programs when they’re in power and they get to dominate when they’re out of power. The one constant is that the U.S. news media bends over backwards to favor the Republicans; what changes is the rationale.

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