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February 3, 2010
Matthew Moore
The press corps has been accused multiple times of giving favorable coverage to President Barack Obama. Accusers include Fox News, Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin and multiple Republican politicians, including John McCain. The common issue raised by these accusers is that the media is extremely pro-Obama and anti-Republican. However, many others have argued that these claims are completely unfounded.
Former Democratic congressman Martin Frost theorized that “the press is always fascinated by things that are new and novel. The two novelties in this race were Obama and Palin. Obama stood up well under media focus and Palin did not. It’s really not too much more complicated than that.”
“The media [has] a duty to subject the incumbent party to more skepticism than the challenger” Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan said.
While the issue of the press corps favoring Obama is significantly less of an problem now, it is still raised by Fox News on an occasional basis. Fox News in turn has been accused of being anti-Obama. In October of 2009, the White House declared that members of the Obama administration would not appear on Fox News Sunday and that Fox News would be barred from certain press events. Senior White House advisor David Axlerod even went as far as saying that Fox News “is not really a news station.”
Lately, the press bias of Obama accusations have all but halted, as news sources from all over have been criticizing Obama, including the liberal news station MSNBC; which has been occasionally labeled as the “home team for supporters of Obama.”
Rachel Maddow of The Rachel Maddow Show criticized the Obama administration for allowing the Stupak Amendment to pass, calling it “the biggest restriction on abortion rights in a generation.”
Other MSNBC commentators have made similar criticism and remarks that show the lack of bias shown towards the administration, including MSNBC president Phil Griffin, who stated the media’s job was to “hold whoever’s in power’s feet to the fire.”
