MSM Remorse. Media admits they treated Obama subjectively: great timing, media

The honeymoon might be over. It appears that after doing everything they could to get Obama elected, MSM (main stream media) is all but admitting they did it on purpose.

Jon Friedman wrote an article for CBS News detailing how he feels “a little guilty” over MSM’s treatment of Obama. Although I don’t agree with him on the SNL bit, let’s not give them that much credit. I believe SNL was just another example of the unabashed, shameless shilling for Obama.

It appears that Friedman is preparing everyone for the disappointment Obama will eventually bring, and is disheartened by it. Not disheartened that Obama will disappoint, but that the media’s honeymoon with him is over and they, including he, must pretend to be real journalists again.

This is one of many articles I’ve read since the election that addresses this topic in this same tone. CNN even had the audacity to say that we “are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know.” Not only are they lamenting having to be journalists, but they’re also able to accomplish the goal of lowering Obama’s expectations (that they raised so high) so they can continue their crusade of manipulating their gullible audience in electing him again in four years. Amazing that they’re already using spin to lower expectations and he hasn’t even been sworn in yet.

Even in this article, Friedman can’t stop himself from saying he’s “thrilled” Obama won – always a sign of a great, un-biased journalist with integrity right? At the end he laments the fact that Obama will eventually have his turn under the microscope. Well, I certainly hope that our president, any president, is under a microscope. I hope someone is questioning his decisions – or are we supposed to worship and follow the King blindly?

In these articles we can feel the writers just aching in trying to admit that he is human, and does make mistakes. Yet these are the same people who have no shame in calling Bush a murderer on a daily basis. Journalistic integrity is gone.

Here’s his article, in its entirety.

The Media's "Obama-Remorse"

MarketWatch's Jon Friedman Says President-Elect Should Remember That What Goes Up, Must Come Down

(MarketWatch) I'm starting to feel a little guilty about the media's treatment of President-elect Barack Obama -- and I may not be the only one.

Chalk it up to a phenomenon I'd like to call "Obama-remorse." You know how you feel buyer's remorse after you've spent a lot of dough on some big-ticket item, only to realize that you might have made a mistake? Well, it's going to happen to the president-elect as well.

Perhaps this sort of recognition prompted Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz to do an incisive piece called "A Giddy Sense of Boosterism" on Nov. 17. As Kurtz noted, the media have tripped over themselves to celebrate and cash in on Obama's victory.

NBC News is preparing a DVD called "Yes, We Can: The Barack Obama Story." ABC and USA Today are racing to publish a book on the election. HBO is readying a documentary on the campaign, too.

As I see it, the media are having second thoughts about their performance over the past year.

First, they gave Sen. Hillary Clinton the cold shoulder and all but rolled out a red carpet for Obama during the Democratic primary season. Perhaps Amy Poehler's eerily spot-on send-up of Clinton on "Saturday Night Live" helped reduce the New York senator to a caricature, making it even easier for the reporters to consign her to a complementary role.

Once Clinton was dispatched, they lavished favorable attention on Obama, as his opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain, was forced to watch from the shadows.

Yes, I'm thrilled that he won the election, underscoring the American ideal that we live in a foreword-thinking democracy, where any man or woman can rise to the highest office in the land. And I'm proud that even Obama's staunchest foes -- particularly the man he defeated, John McCain -- seem to be willing to accept his victory and pledge to help him turn around the economy and cure the nation's other ills.

Adulation Express

But I also feel guilty because I know that the media's Adulation Express -- never to be confused with McCain's old Straight Talk Express -- is going to hit a few speed bumps before it inexorably grinds to a halt.

It's inevitable. Look at what happened to Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate. When McCain first nominated her, she could do no wrong in the media's eyes. She was hailed for her aw-shucks demeanor, in contrast to the inveterate Beltway sharpies, and her unlikely ascent to such a big job (I suspect that Tina Fey's brilliant impersonation of Palin on "Saturday Night Live" owed as much to Palin's newness as it did to Fey's uncanny ability to look and sound like the governor of Alaska. Most SNL viewers had no frame of reference for Palin, other than her speech at the Republican National Convention, so Fey didn't have to worry about competing with a hardened image of Palin).

It's inevitable; too, that Obama will eventually have his turn under the microscope. When the media start picking apart some of his Cabinet choices or his pronouncements on the state of the economy or his declarations about Iraq, he may be surprised to find that the afterglow of his stunning victory turns sour so fast.

MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Have the media treated President-elect Barack Obama too kindly for the past year - and, if so, should that kind of treatment end now that he has won the election?

Join the online community of Media Web readers by posting comments directly to the MarketWatch.com site.

By Jon Friedman Copyright © 2008 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved