It’s no surprise that journalists are so often “taken” with Obama. Given his youthful optimism, oratory skills, and history-making run to become the nation’s first African-American President, one would expect him to get a fair amount of media coverage.
Studies prove that Obama did receive a far greater share of media coverage, but it may have been at least partially based on viewer demand. An NBC News / Wall Street Journal survey from July 2008 revealed that the public’s interest in Obama was considerably higher (51%) than McCain (27%).
Conservative Fox News host, Glenn Beck (then working for CNN), said “The media isn’t around for its health; they’re here to make money…. And if Obama [coverage] drives sales or ratings, I cannot blame them for continuing to tap that well until it runs dry.”
Obama’s face appeared on the cover of more magazines because it sold a lot more magazines than McCain’s. But few expected the deluge of worshipful press coverage that followed his every move.
The media’s “crush” on Obama has been the most discussed phenomenon of the campaign, and his Republican rival, John McCain, didn’t pass up the chance to take advantage of it. Revealing Obama as a media-created “messianic figure”, the McCain campaign’s “Obama Love” video showed snippets of journalists’ gooey praise, set to the strains of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”. A viral video version of the ad hit nearly 260,000 page views in a few days, before being removed by the McCain campaign due to copyright concerns.
Other factors that drove added media coverage for Obama were the unsolicited expressions of “Obama Love” from the general public. Using social media and video sharing sites, Obama Girl ‘s “I Got a Crush… on Obama” online video hit “viral” status after Obama Girl herself (Amber Lee Ettinger) appeared on Saturday Night Live, Geraldo at Large, and The O’Reilly Factor.
The gap in coverage during the 2008 election has been proven out by various sources, but they differ in their interpretation of research. According to news monitoring service, the Tyndall Report (7/08), during the first half of 2008, McCain got only 52 percent of the amount of network media coverage as Obama, but this is not uncommon. Tyndall also points out that during every election year studied (except 1988), the candidate from the party who was not currently in the White House received more coverage than the incumbent party’s candidate. When you consider that Obama’s race for the nomination lasted a full four months beyond the announcement of McCain’s nomination, the amount of Obama coverage in 2008 was not surprisingly high.
Perhaps the perceived media “crush” was so noticeable because the mainstream media anchors were so overtly fond of Obama themselves, fully embracing and distributing the Obama brand to their massive audiences. When Obama received positive coverage, it wasn’t just a few kind words spoken by a pundit, it was gushing praise.
When Chris Matthews of MSNBC said, “I felt this thrill going up my leg,” after one of Obama’s speeches, he was responding to Obama’s powerful oratory skills.
Then there was CBS reporter Harry Smith who, after watching Obama deliver his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, said “I’m not so sure I have ever witnessed anything like this in all of the politics I have covered….there were certain points during [Obama’s] speech when the stadium was just so alive, and the ground was almost quaking.”
CNN’s David Gergen went even further, when he rhapsodized that the speech was “less as speech than a symphony… it had a high tempo, at times inspiring, then it became more intimate, slower… it was a masterpiece.”
In July of 2008, when Obama went off on his European tour, CBS News’ Katie Couric promoted the network’s coverage as an “Obamathon… featuring non-stop coverage all week, and later asked “Will this summer of love last?”
It is not surprising that the public came to believe the accusations of media bias. A July 2008 Rasmussen poll found that 49% of those surveyed believed that “most reporters will try to help Obama win”, while only 14% believed that more reporters would try to help McCain.
According to Bernie Goldberg, author of “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media”, the mainstream media went completely “in the tank” to ensure Obama was elected the 44th President, showing themselves to be little more than “partisan hacks”.
Whether you voted for him or not, if there was one unquestioned assumption about the 2008 election, it was that the media’s love affair with Barack Obama.
To learn more about Obama’s influence, both in and out of the media spotlight, visit IThankObama.com.