Obama's Chilly Spring: Once-Cordial Press Coverage Turns Decidedly Cool

WP: Obama's Chilly Spring
Once-Cordial Press Coverage Turns Decidedly Cool
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008; Page C01


Barack Obama didn't waffle when chastising a reporter in Scranton, Pa., but his unease with the media was apparent. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The man who tried to soar above politics has been brought back to earth by the same media organizations that helped fuel his spectacular rise. After more than a year of mostly glowing coverage, Barack Obama is having to defend his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his temerity in not sporting a flag pin, even his arugula-loving, bad-bowling, let-me-eat-my-waffle persona that fostered what Newsweek has branded "the Bubba Gap." "The media have decided to get tougher on Obama," says St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans. "There was so much talk about him getting such an easy ride that some journalists got tired of it."

When the Illinois senator denounced his former pastor last week, it followed days of saturation coverage of Wright's inflammatory, sometimes eccentric remarks. The press, which was slow to recognize the importance of the Wright controversy -- videotapes of his sermons could have been purchased months earlier -- was no longer willing to dismiss the reverend as a sideshow. Still, says David Greenberg, a Rutgers University professor of journalism and history, the coverage could be far worse. For journalists, he says, "there has been a real infatuation with Obama that has served as almost an unconscious restraint" as many became "taken with the idea of demonstrating their tolerance and America's tolerance by electing a black candidate." What loosened those restraints, Greenberg says, was the media's conclusion that Obama had virtually wrapped up his nomination fight against Hillary Clinton. "It's backwards -- the toughest scrutiny should come while it's still a real fight," he says.

Obama's image has undergone something of a transformation. In March, feeding the curiosity about his background, a Newsweek cover story focused on "When Barry Became Barack" in college, while a Time cover profiled the candidate's mother. By last week, Newsweek's cover piece was exploring why he seems "strange," "exotic" and, to some, "haughty" and "a bit of an egghead." How did Obama, cast by some journalists as the new JFK, come to be depicted as what the New Republic's John Judis says may be "The Next McGovern"?

When Obama won 10 straight states, he was hailed as a winner. When he was beaten in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, reporters began poring over exit-poll data showing him doing poorly among white working-class voters. "After you lose," Obama said on "Fox News Sunday," "then everybody writes these anguished columns about why did you lose." As a newcomer to the national scene -- as well as the first African American with a serious shot at the presidency -- Obama is something of a blank canvas for political writers, especially compared with a former first lady. His long association with Wright prompted journalistic questions, however belated, about what Obama believes and why he remained at Wright's church despite the pastor's anti-American rhetoric....

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Even when he was riding high, Obama provided surprisingly little access to his traveling press corps. When a reporter recently tried to ask Obama a question in a Scranton, Pa., diner -- drawing the response, "Why is it that, like, I can't just eat my waffle?" -- the interruption was in part because of the paucity of news conferences. Such incidents reinforce the growing media perception of Obama as aloof....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/04/AR2008050401899_pf.html

They realized they had been caught napping and letting this guy become too popular too fast. So they did a quick 180 aided by whining from the clinton campaign and their buds in the repub slime machine and began trashing him.

The MSM never fails to amaze me. When they can't gripe about today, they revert to some freakin waffle.

I think they're pissed that Obama isn't the pushover they want him to be.

When you see the photo, though, you can hardly blame the guy for being a little put-off by the press attention, and all those cameras, aimed at him and his waffle!

Hillary's or McCain's flag pins are???????

Talk about double-standards.

Oh, and BTW, Obama won Texas.

It works for McCain. Obama needs to continue to be as gracious and accessible as humanly possible with the media; what he must not do is turn into a Howard Dean-style media scold. Seriously, if you don't want an adversarial relationship with reporters (and you don't), you've got to apply the three Fs: Flattery, Food, and Free booze.

have a problem with them. Hillary, of course, has a long-standing adversarial relationship with the press. They didn't like Al Gore to begin with, but he didn't seem to try to overcome their bias against him. I can't remember much about the press and the Kerry campaign, but I don't remember any particular smoozing by him.

McCain, on the other hand, smoozes the press bigtime, to his great advantage -- as did GW Bush in '00.

It's unfortunate, but that's the situation as I see it. Historically, I think they used to say not to get into a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

WTF? Wearing a flag pin has become an issue in this election???

The founders are spinning in their graves.

After BHO said he wld investigate * et. al, within 2 days they turned against him.

Why didn'they ask HRC?