Eric Boehlert: Covering new presidents: the media's double standard

[babylonsister]

Covering new presidents: the media's double standard
by Eric Boehlert | November 20, 2008 - 12:53pm


In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Once a president takes office ... an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters," wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: "They are inevitably going to turn on him, as all -- this happened to every administration. I don't see why we should be surprised. It is the natural turn of events."

The conventional wisdom is quite clear: The press always turns skeptical and becomes combative when new presidents come to town.

Except, of course, when the press does not.

In truth, the model being touted today by media insiders didn't apply to the previous two administrations. That model didn't apply to Bill Clinton in 1993 because the press wasn't simply skeptical about his administration, the press savaged it. And the model didn't apply to George W. Bush in 2001, because instead of turning combative toward him, the press rolled over for the Republican.

In terms of how the press has treated the last two new presidents, there's the Democratic model (i.e. overly hostile), and the Republican model (overly docile).

At the outset of the Bush presidency, when it became obvious that the press had adopted a softer standard for judging the new Republican president, author Jeffrey Toobin noted that "the high emotional temperature of the Clinton years left a lot of people, including journalists, kind of exhausted." He added, "I think it will probably take a while to sort of gin that back up again."

Over the course of eight years of covering Bush, I'm not sure the press ever recaptured the fever it displayed during the Clinton years. So it would be deeply suspicious if, in 2009, the press managed to turn up that emotional temperature just in time to cover another Democratic administration.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18788

[Demeter]

1. I Ignore the MSM As Much As Is Humanly Possible, On Principle

for just this reason, and for the fact that they don't do news, they do press releases.

[babylonsister]

3. Not everyone. nt

[fasttense]

4. A lot of Americans seem to be ignoring the corporate media lately.

If the majority of voters had listened to the news readers and talking heads on the corporate owned medias, we would never have had a President-Elect Obama. And despite the savage attacks on Clinton, his approval rating remained high.

People are getting their news and what they consider facts from other sources. The corporate media seems to have lost some of its control and Americans are turning to other more reliable sources for information.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Howard Kurtz is full of double standards.....

Gawd, how he loved Bush....for a really, really long time. :eyes: