By Cindy Allen, Managing Editor
The presidential election has been decided, and Americans presented Barack Obama with pretty much a landslide victory.
There will be a lot of analysis of this election — the good parts, the bad parts and the strategies that went into winning and losing.
The media — particularly the national media — will be analyzed and scrutinized as never before. This election provided media viewers the most skewed and advocacy-type of journalism in any presidential election than we’ve ever seen before.
News channels such as MSNBC and NBC went to the extreme in advocating for Obama in this election. Fox News went pretty far — but not as extreme — in advocating for Republican Sen. John McCain, and particularly his VP pick Sarah Palin.
Voters noticed what was going on. According to the Pew Research Center, voters overwhelmingly believe the media wanted Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70 percent, Americans said most journalists wanted to see Obama win.
On election night, an African-American ABC news reporter tearfully declared his own personal satisfaction at Obama’s win.
On Thursday, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews declared it was his job as a journalist to make sure the Obama presidency is a successful one.
Oprah Winfrey — not a news reporter or journalist, but still a highly-respected media figure — went on her show after the election declaring her excitement over the Obama win. She had given him her endorsement a long time ago, but refrained from talking politics on her show during the election. But, now, she says she’s unleashed, so we can expect her to prop up the new president as much as she can.
So, where does this leave the American media consumer?
One of the important roles of the media has been as watchdog over the government. Will the press in general now abandon that role over this historic presidential win?
It’s no secret the media landscape is changing. The Internet has brought in a whole new group of supposed journalists and reporters. Many of them are just partisan hacks — but some of them are pretty good. I suspect Americans will come to rely more on the blogging journalists to actually dig and investigate what is going on with the U.S. government.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well, in my opinion, it’s a bad thing for the media in general to move so far toward any political spectrum. It reminds me of the muckraking days of the late 1800s and early 1900s where most newspapers around at the time were nothing but advocacy hacks for one political party or another.
The broadcast media may be beyond repair as far as its advocacy platforms. Because of the 24-hour news cycle, they have to fill air time with something, and most of the time it’s going to be filled with commentary or opinion. Broadcast media are tending to move more toward celebrity anchors, etc. who don’t actually investigate or do journalism — they just provide analysis.
Newspapers, however, I think can redeem themselves and become true watchdogs again. Newspapers still have a distinct credibility edge on their broadcast counterparts. Newspapers, with their print products and their online products, can and should get back in the business of watchdog journalism. Newspapers have editorial pages in which political opinion can still be expressed; however, newspapers don’t devote the majority of their information package to opinion and analysis the way news networks do.
The mainstream media — of which most newspapers are a part — will still struggle because of the changing media landscape. Staff cutbacks will take away seasoned and credible journalists. But, newspapers can still do the “journalism thing” much better than their broadcast counterparts, and it’s my hope they will get back to the job of watching over what the government is doing.
Journalists today have some real gut-checking to do. While all journalists, as Americans, want our country to be successful, it is not “our job” to ensure our country’s success. It is not “our job” to ensure our president’s success or our governor’s success.
It is our job to provide the public with credible, factual information about what is going on with their government and their government officials. If we don’t embrace that role again, we are doing a disservice to our country.
Allen is managing editor of the News & Eagle. She can be reached at 548-8163 or by e-mail at editor@enidnews.com.
