Bernard Goldberg - A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media

FOR NANCY, BRIAN, AND CATHERINE

Afew years ago I spoke by phone to a graduate class in politics at American University in Washington, D.C., about my then new book, Bias, which was an insiders account of how liberal journalists operate in the so-called mainstream media. I had been a correspondent with CBS News for twenty-eight years and so I knew how and why supposedly fair-minded journalists slanted the news to fit their own worldview. Bias had become a New York Times number one bestseller and was creating a lot of buzz, and not just among conservatives. Liberals were talking about the book too, but not in a good way.

My former colleagues at CBS News, as you might imagine, were not happy with Bias, and one even told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that writing it was an act of treason. And that was one of the nicer things that liberals in the media said about me. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales reached deep into his bag of clichs and called me a no-talent hack. Columnist Michael Kinsley was much kinder; he only said I was dense. And when my good friend Jed Duvall, who was a former CBS News correspondent, ran into a Washington journalist we both had worked with at CBS (Ill call him Marty, which just happens to be his real name) and asked if he had read my book, Marty simply declared, That bastard! Did you read Bernies book, Jed asked again. That bastard, Marty repeated like a clever parrot that had just learned a new phrase. Turns out, he had not read the book and said he had no intention of reading it, but Marty was sure of one thing: I was a bastard.

The kids at American University did read the book since it was part of a class assignment. After I talked about Bias on the speakerphone for fifteen or twenty minutes and asked for questions or comments, one young woman said all she wanted to do after she read the book was throw it across the room. Very liberal, I thought. The other students were more reasonable, but none had anything good to say about Bias. Having already been accused of treason and been called a no-talent hack, dense, and a bastard, this was no big deal.

Then the professor jumped in. Isnt it the role of the media to effect change in society?

It was a statement posing as a question.

Your change or mine? I asked.

Silence. After a while, I thought that I had either gone deaf or that the phone went dead.

It had never occurred to this supposedly well-educated liberal man who taught liberal kids at a liberal college that change comes in more than one package. My change, I explained to him, would be very different from his. I didnt go into a lot of detail that day, but so you know, the kind of change that I want includes lower taxes and smaller government. I want an end to affirmative action, at least the way its currently practiced. In a post-September 11 world, I want ethnic profiling at our airports. And I want kids on college campuses who shout down speakers they dont agree with tossed out of the auditorium, then out of school, either temporarily or permanently.

This, obviously, was not the kind of change the good professor had in mind. The change he wanted the media to effect was liberal change, the only change worth effecting as far as liberals are concerned.

My point is this: it is not the medias role to effect changeeither the professors kind or mine. And while were on the subject, it is not the medias role to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, even though this is taken as gospel in Americas liberal newsrooms. It is the medias role to report the news, not to advocate for causes, no matter how noble journalists think the cause might be.

Then the presidential campaign of 2008 came along and that long-ago exchange with the professor came rushing back to me.

Never in my memory were so many journalists so intent on effecting change as they were during the campaign of 2008. Sure, mainstream journalists always root for the Democrat. But this time it was different. This time journalists were not satisfied merely being partisan witnesses to history. This time they wanted to be real players and help determine the outcome. This time they were on a missiona noble, historic mission, as far as they were concerned. In fact, I could not remember a time when so many supposedly objective reporters had acted so blatantly as full-fledged advocates for one sideand without even a hint of embarrassment.

The medias crush on Barack Obama began even before his presidential campaign. There was just something about the guyhis personal charisma, his liberalism, and of course, the fact that he is blackthat made him irresistible to mainstream journalists. As Politico editor in chief John Harris recalled about his time with the Washington Post, A couple years ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they needed to go through detox when they came backOh, hes so impressive, hes so charismatic, and were kind of like, Down, boy.

The intensity of this love affair grew exponentially once Obama began running for president. The media not only gave him extremely favorable coverage, but they also took the only other real contender for the nomination, Hillary Clinton, into the back room and beat her with a rubber hose. There was a simple explanation for this: in liberal media circles, race trumps sex. It was more important, as many journalists saw it, that America get its first black president than its first woman president. Or as political pundit Mike Barnicle put it on MSNBC just four days before the election, an Obama victory would represent an only-in-America tale that would provide a a great reflection of America to the rest of the world.

Translation: we need the black guy to win because hes black.

But there was another reason that wasnt as obvious. Helping to elect our first African-American president would make liberal journalists feel better about the most important people in their livesthemselves. See, they could say (if not out loud, then certainly in private when they were congratulating themselves on their goodness, in the company of other wonderful journalists), we did something about Americas ugly racial history. We did something this broken country can finally be proud of!

After that, it was a no-brainer: Obama vs. McCain? New vs. old? Liberal vs. (sometimes) conservative? Come on! And this time the mainstream media did more than merely spin the news to help the Democrats; this time they de facto enlisted in the Obama campaign. And they didnt give a damn what you or anybody else thought about it.

From very early on, I had no doubt Obama would win. I read the polls like everybody else, but it was much more than that. Here was a mysterious man who came out of nowhere, which was enticing in itself. And he possessed qualities no politician in my lifetime, except maybe John F. Kennedy, had possessed, especially a youthful charisma that made him immensely likeable even if you didnt care much for his politics. Yes, Ronald Reagan was likeable, too. But that was different. Reagan was your grandfather. Obama is your friend.