"Soft" Press Sharpens Its Focus on Obama: "Will Teflon coating now be scratched?" [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: 'Soft' Press Sharpens Its Focus on Obama
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 3, 2008; C01

During a campaign stop in Ohio last week, ABC's Jake Tapper asked Barack Obama about what he called "an attempt by conservatives and Republicans to paint you as unpatriotic."

Tapper's litany: "That you didn't put your hand over your heart during the national anthem, that you no longer wear an American flag on your lapel pin, that you met with some former members of the Weather Underground, and now they are questioning your wife's comments when she said she hasn't been proud of the U.S. until just recently."

Obama dismissed the criticism as "nonsense." But did the exchange mark the end of a long period in which the media have gone easy on the man who could all but clinch the Democratic nomination in tomorrow's primaries? Are the media going to change the environment that prompted Kristen Wiig, playing a CNN anchor on "Saturday Night Live," to declare that she and her colleagues "are in the tank for Obama"?

The Illinois senator still hasn't faced the sort of negative onslaught that generally envelops presidential front-runners. But after a year of defying the laws of journalistic gravity, he is being brought back to earth.

Some of this involves recycled reporting that didn't get much traction the first time around. Within the last two weeks, ABC's "World News" has done a story on Obama voting "present" nearly 130 times as an Illinois legislator, two months after that information was on the New York Times front page. "NBC Nightly News" has followed up a two-week-old Times piece about Obama compromising on Senate legislation affecting a nuclear energy company that contributed to his campaign. A "CBS Evening News" segment reviewed a series of negative points -- Obama's controversial pastor, his ties to indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko, voting present, the nuclear contributions and the lack of a flag pin....

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...after a year in which Obama was hailed as the second coming of JFK, will his Teflon coating now be scratched?...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/02/AR2008030202476_pf.html