David Zurawik, the ace TV critic of The Baltimore Sun, makes some great points in his blog post today. First, Barack Obama isn't so much being covered by the MSM as being covered for by the MSM. And second, that such puffy coverage is not good for Obama. It's making him look soft, and so he is not reaching the swing voters in the middle.
Indeed, let's ask ourselves: How is Obama's current media strategy working out for him? Yes, he is getting mostly friendly treatment from the likes of CBS News' Steve Kroft,but the President's popularity is tumbling, and his health care plan is stagnating. Here's Zurawik:
Let's try to analyze how he controls some conversations as he did last Sunday with Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes." I wrote about that last week -- the way in which he set himself up as the model of civility, and Kroft not only didn't question him, he helped him in that claim.
I can't tell you how surprised I was Monday morning to hear a voicemail from a longtime CBS News division employee who I have worked and liked for years suggesting that there was something peculiar about me analyzing the president's TV performances on "60 Minutes" so closely as I had in a post I put up Sunday night. I was the only critic so interested, he said, as if I should be worried about that.
In thanking him for his email, I told him I didn't think I was the only critic, but if I was, that was OK, too, The one way I have come to know during the past 25 years that I am often on the right track is when I am NOT running with the pack of TV critics. In fact, TV and media criticism are never worse than when they are practiced as a pack activity. By the way in another post on Sept. 10 announcing President Obama's return to the "friendly confines" of "60 Minutes," I wondered in print if this could "be the start of another media blitz." I didn't know the half of it.
So there you have it: CBS News flacks, as mentioned above, are working pretty much in tandem with the Obama White House flacks, to keep the MSM docile and supportive--or afraid to be non-supportive. But such a strategy obviously has no effect on, say, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or a hundred others who are demonstrably immune to Obama's carrots and/or sticks. And of course, it's those journalists and commentators who are much more interesting as a result, because even if one doesn't agree with them, Beck and Limbaugh are at least willing to speak truth to power--at least the truth as they see it. And that's refreshing.
The irony is that Obama would probably do well on Fox--in part because he is naturally a performer, and good on TV, and in part because the drama would be so much higher on Fox than it will be on any of the MSM interviews that Obama is doing. I doubt that I will watch Obama on any of the MSM shows--confident, of course, that on the off chance that he does say something interesting, I will be able to catch it later. But I will be watching Bertha Lewis on "Fox News Sunday," because that will likely be a great show.
One person, btw, who could explain the enormous political value of putting a little oppositional grit into your media plan to Obama would be Fox's own Roger Ailes. Way back when, in the late 60s, Ailes was the media adviser to Richard Nixon, then running for president. So Nixon went right into the arena, answering tough questions from reporters and also from citizens. Most of the questions were harsh, but Nixon thrived on the dynamic, and he won the presidency in 1968. There's a lesson there, but most likely Obama won't ever even know about it, because his advisers won't tell him.
