◼ The election outcome was still unclear at press time. But no matter who wins, one thing is clear — the country will have to deal with several major problems that the mainstream media largely ignored to protect President Obama. - IBD
On issue after issue, in fact, the media haven't covered Obama as much as they've covered up for him, whether it's the dismal state of the economy, the failure of his policies or the increased troubles abroad.
The effort worked remarkably well, helping to shield Obama from responsibility, protecting his image and providing a solid floor under his approval ratings.
But whoever wins the White House, the fact remains that the country faces huge problems that must be addressed. And after the election, the press is sure to churn out what can charitably be called "now they tell us" stories about these matters, once any potential election impact has passed.
On Tuesday, Yahoo News posted a story by seasoned journalist Walter Shapiro, who finally got around to wondering whether "anyone outside (Obama's) family and the inner sanctum of the White House staff really know Obama — or have a clear handle on what he would do with a second term."
That's the sort of question you'd expect the press to pursue in the weeks leading up to the election, when it might have helped voters make up their minds. But it's of little value after they've left for the polls.
Among other stories the media are likely to "discover" after the election is over:
• The economy really does stink. The press studiously ignored the ongoing economic catastrophe under Obama, while parading any "green shoot" they could find that suggested growth was around the corner.
Don't be surprised if, after the election, they start to notice that three years of subpar growth have left the middle class further behind and more mired in poverty, and created a vast pool of long-term unemployed.
• Massive debt and entitlement crises loom. Despite four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits and a national debt that now exceeds total GDP, the media largely treated the debt crisis with a collective yawn.
Ditto the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. These crises are nevertheless real and will have to be dealt with soon, a fact the press will almost certainly acknowledge after Nov. 6.
• The debt ceiling limit is fast approaching. Another story that went largely unremarked this campaign is the fact that the country is approaching the new debt ceiling limit. The Treasury Dept. warned last week that it expects the government to reach its borrowing limit before the end of the year....
• Questions about Benghazi still demand answers. After almost two full months spent burying the Benghazi story, expect the mainstream press to wake up and notice that, as the Washington Post admitted in an editorial last Friday, "a host of unanswered questions" remains.
So far, only Fox News has bothered to pursue this story, but we expect that other outlets will pick up on it after the elections.
We could go on. But you get the idea. More. At the link.
◼ Five ways the mainstream media tipped the scales in favor of Obama
...4. The Benghazi Blackout: Right after the September 11 attack in Libya, the networks proclaimed that the events would bolster President Obama — “reminding voters of his power as commander-in-chief,” as NBC’s Peter Alexander stated on the September 14 edition of "Today." But as a cascade of leaked information erased the portrait of Obama as a heroic commander, the broadcast networks shunted the Benghazi story to the sidelines.
News broke online in late September, for example, that Team Obama knew within 24 hours that the attack was likely the result of terrorism. That starkly contradicted claims from White House press secretary Jay Carney, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and President Obama himself that the attack was a “spontaneous” reaction to an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube. Yet, ABC took nearly two days to bring this story to viewers, while CBS and NBC held off for three days.
This was, shamefully, the broadcast networks’ pattern in October: New developments exposing the administration’s failure to provide adequate security, or contradictions in their public statements, were either given stingy coverage or buried completely.
The puzzle pieces revealed a disturbing failure of Obama’s national security apparatus, but the networks flitted in and out of the story, never giving it any traction.
Instead of an “October Surprise,” the networks engineered an “October Suppression” — keeping a lid on the boiling Benghazi story until Election Day. Who knows how voters might have reacted if the media had covered this story as tenaciously as they did Romney’s “47% gaffe”?
5. Burying the Bad Economy: Pundits agreed that Obama’s weakness was the failure of the US economy to revive after his expensive stimulus and four years of $1 trillion deficits. But the major networks failed to offer the sustained, aggressive coverage of the economy that incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush faced in 1992, or even that George W. Bush faced in 2004 — both years when the national economy was in better shape than it is now.
According to a study conducted that year by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, from January through September of 1992, the networks ran a whopping 1,289 stories on the economy, 88% of which painted it in a dismal, negative light. That fall, the unemployment rate was 7.6%, lower than today’s 7.9%, and economic growth in the third quarter was 2.7%, better than today’s 2.0%. Yet the media coverage hammered the idea of a terrible economy, and Bush lost re-election.
In 2004, the economy under George W. Bush was far better than it is today — higher growth, lower unemployment, smaller deficits and cheaper gasoline — yet network coverage that year was twice as hostile to Bush than it was towards Obama this year, according to a study by the Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute.
When Republican presidents have faced reelection, network reporters made sure to spotlight economic “victims” — the homeless man, the woman without health insurance, the unemployed worker, the senior citizen who had to choose between medicine and food. But this year, with an economy as bad as any since the Great Depression, those sympathetic anecdotes have vanished from the airwaves — a huge favor to Obama and the Democrats.
Given Obama’s record, the Romney campaign could have overcome much of this media favoritism and still prevailed — indeed, they almost did. But taken together, these five trends took the media’s historical bias to new levels this year, and saved Obama’s presidency in the process.
*****
Saved his presidency, and doomed the nation.
