Thursday, May 1, 2008

It's the Media, Stupid...

On April 19th the New York Times published an OP-ED by Bob Herbert entitled, "Road Map to Defeat."

The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can't-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose.

After much discussion, Mr. Herbert concludes with the following:

It's not too late for the Democrats to pull this off. But there's already blood on the floor from the nomination fight, and the fight ain't over. The G.O.P.'s fondest wish is that the Democrats keep doing what they're doing.

And I am here to say that the conflict between the Media and Rev. Jeremiah Wright has pretty well doomed the Democrats chances of success in November -- we have turned the corner -- it is all downhill for here on.

But don't blame Rev. Wright, he is NOT the cause of the problem -- he is an innocent bystander that somebody chose to marginalize in an effort to discredit Barack Obama. I don't know who started the fracas; however, the Media is guilty of PILING-ON to the point where Rev. Wright had to respond.

It's the Media, stupid -- I have no way of documenting the number of times the Media has used the "out-of-context" clip to marginalize someone -- remember the Howard Dean "Rant" that sunk the Dean campaign four years ago?? And how about the Obama "bitter" incident during the primary in Pennsylvania??

Rev. Wright's only mistake is to see the incident as an attack on Black Religion. Obviously, we are talking about motivation, an individual characteristic, and far too complicated to attribute such a simple explanation to a group as large as "The Media."

When the media gets involved in this type of controversy, that media looses it's objectivity and becomes a creator of news, by the simple process of keeping the subject alive. The media should have killed the controversy in the beginning by refusing to capitalize on out-of-context material when first introduced.

To be continued...

Doug Skoglund skoglund@pdmsb.com

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