Eric Boehlert: NYT's Awkward Attempt To Hype The Blago/Obama Story

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19173

NYT's Awkward Attempt To Hype The Blago/Obama Story
by Eric Boehlert | December 12, 2008



We doubt this is how the craft is taught at Columbia J-School {emphasis added}:

Although prosecutors said Mr. Obama was not implicated in their investigation, the accusations of naked greed and brazen influence-peddling have raised questions from some about the political culture in which the President-elect began his career.

Notes Dan Kennedy:

Thus does {the Times' Jack} Healy follow two crucial rules in cranking out garbage like this: use the passive voice, and darkly allude to the raising of questions.

The larger point is that in order for the Beltway press to gin up this Blago story this week, basic journalism guidelines had to be set aside and in some cases brazenly ignored. That's the only way this story worked because simply reporting the facts as presented by the prosecutors would have made it painfully clear that, in terms of Obama's involvement, there was none. In fact, Obama had thwarted Blago's money-making scheme.

But that wasn't the story the press wants to tell (i.e. Obama the reformer rebukes corrupt local pol), so lots of reporters and pundits have consciously, and often systematically, taken it upon themselves to make the story more appealing.

Oh yeah, who are the crucial "some" at the center of the all-important scandal? The Times later ID's them as "Republican leaders." In other words, partisan sniping. Well, that is newsworthy.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I hope that the Obama staff is taking the names of those "journalists" who are

ginning up this story, and remember these names when it comes time work with various press representatives.
There should be a time that these "journalists" will regret making up all this bullshit.

[Cha]

3. The so called journalists do need

to be held accountable.

[Cha]

2. Corporatemedia embellishes the

hype at their own peril. Team Obama will find a way to circumvent them if all they do is rubber stamp fauxsn00ze.

[AndreaCG]

4. I stopped buying the Times after the 2000 recount fiasco.

I buy the NY Daily News. I don't agree with a lot of their editorials but their reporters are honest. I hold the newspaper of record, with all the news that's fit to print, to a higher standard and they too often don't meet it, as in this utter BS.