After last week's ABC debate debacle, John Harris and Jim Vandehei have proclaimed that journalists are enabling the so-called Obama Phenomenon, citing in their Politico story the breakdown of objective points of view, the rise of the agenda-driven liberal blogosphere, and coverage of the ideal politics versus the real as the reasons for this so-called ethical breach.
I'm glad they raised the question because it is worthy of consideration. Theirs would be a great argument if it weren't for three things.
First, there is no such thing as an objective journalist. There are many who try hard to separate their opinions from their reporting, and they serve an important and admirable role in our society. But no one can deny their knee-jerk reaction to observing an event or interviewing a person. You can write around it. Editors can neutralize it. Through the consistent publication of various perspectives, media outlets can present fairly balanced story lines over time. You cannot expect reporters to be disaffected by their experiences, and neutralizing their instincts may actually be a hinderance to their ability to asses The Truth.
Secondly, The Truth is inherently subjective and the rise of the agenda-driven liberal blogosphere is proof that revealing one's bias and engaging in thoughtful discourse is a more complete way of keeping citizens informed. HuffPost and Co. may be in the business of advocacy platforms, but it can be argued that this process is more transparent for users. We don't have to rely solely on some Metro editor's ability to manage beat reporters and scour PR Newswire, Reuters and the City News Service in order to disseminate a daily dose of The Truth. We can incorporate it as one of many sources of information, which now includes the ability to hear directly from power players in the blogosphere. We still need that Metro editor as our middleman because he's a smart guy with a lot of context to contribute to our collective conversation, but it's more likely that journalists miss the power they had over the filtering process. It borders on insulting to presume that the general public cannot separate the nuances of a blog post and a New York Times story.
(And I'll reveal my own biases before I deliver this last one. I was apparently so high on Obama Crack after briefly interviewing him on the 2004 campaign trail for The Chicago Tribune's RedEye edition that I quit my day job, started babbling about Hope and ran freezing all over Iowa knocking on doors on his behalf in January. Oh, and I wrote about it on The Huffington Post. Here and here and here .)
Finally, if the media loves Obama, those glowing stories were certainly nowhere to be found last fall during the reign of Hillary inevitability. All of last year while my pals and I were pounding the pavement and predicting his victory we were scoffed at like a group of adorable political neophytes. I could scroll through my Inbox and find the dozens of stories sent to me proclaiming that OBambi (or whatever Maureen Dowd dubbed him) had no chance, citing poll after poll with double-digit HRC margins.
I was standing in the front row of that speech in Iowa on Jan. 3 with all the die-hard staffers and citizens who made it happen, and on Wednesday morning when all the journalists proclaimed him the next Kennedy it made me a little sick to my stomach. Too afraid to acknowledge the grassroots movement he laboriously built in those early states and the millions of dollars he was raking in prior to standing at the podium that night, it was suddenly SuperBowl Tuesday and everyone wanted to go to Disneyland with the country's new MVP. Obama (who still has his name routinely misspelled like everyone's favorite terrorist) had to work around this country's media to get where he is today.
Perhaps the better question is not whether journalists are dangerously enamored with Barack Obama, but why the media is insistent on perpetuating the same old angles when something new is happening in America.