A Case Study Showing Mainstream Media Is Worse Than You Think

The mainstream media has actually accelerated its slobbering over its Messiah, “The One,” Barack Obama. I thought it couldn’t get worse (I always think that and I’m always surprised when it always gets worse), but take a look at Newsweek, the weekly newsmagazine for Jan. 5, 2009. As you know, Newsweek is beginning to look like Oprah’s magazine. She runs a picture of Oprah on every cover. It seems Newsweek is running a picture of Mr. Obama on every cover.

Can it get worse than that? On the Jan. 5 issue titled “The Global Elite” the cover has a picture of Obama right in the middle of all kinds of print and graphics. Turn one page and you’ll find a full-page picture of Mr. Obama greeting wildly enthusiastic crowds. The caption in the lower-right corner says “The One: Obamamania on the Campaign Trail.” Turn another page and there’s still another full-page picture of Mr. Obama waving to the crowd, over a heading of “The World’s Most Powerful People.”

How can Newsweek demonstrate its Obamania more effectively? I have one suggestion, as I’m always eager to help Newsweek lose whatever crumb of credibility it still retains. I noticed that a recent issue of Oprah had not one picture of Oprah on the cover but two. I expect that every issue of Newsweek will follow that precedent with two Obama pictures on every cover, and perhaps on multiple pages right after the cover.

The three full pages of Mr. Obama right at the front of the magazine is only the beginning. You’ll find a note from the editor, in which he has only praise for Mr. Obama. We are told this is the “Age of Obama” and he has brought “a resurgence of American credibility.” The Age of Obama is just a kind of hyperbole repeated elsewhere, and I’m not sure where they got the “resurgence of American credibility.” My guess is that the resurgence may involve Islamofascist terrorists who see in the White House a weakling, more prone to appease than do battle, and likely to cut back on the military and on the tools necessary to fight terrorism.

Mr. Obama, on foreign policy, is taking the pose of Jimmy Carter II, with Mr. Carter’s approach of diplomacy and appeasement, which led to disaster as practiced by Mr. Carter, and will lead to worse if practiced by Mr. Obama.

Turn another page after seeing three full pages of the Messiah, and there is a full-panel picture of Michelle Obama that dominates the page. Turn two more pages and you’ll find another picture of Mr. Obama, under the heading, “If I had Subpoena Power: Five Questions for Obama.” This is an attempt for one page to stop slobbering, worshipping and deifying Mr. Obama and to give the illusion of tough questions. But they obviously won’t ask him these questions, as they don’t have subpoena power. Apparently, it never occurred to the journalists at Newsweek that you can ask questions, even tough questions, of a presidential candidate, a president-elect or a president without subpoena power. Maybe that’s Newsweek’s excuse for not asking tough questions. Their reporters thought they needed subpoena power to do so. Mr. Obama got through the whole campaign without facing tough questions from the mainstream media. I learned first hand if you ask tough questions (as I did in many e-mails to the campaign) that they simply acknowledge your inquiry and then proceed to ignore you.

Newsweek is just beginning its slobbering over Mr. Obama after its opening. Later, on a page entitled “Conventional Wisdom Watch 2008,” Newsweek leads with an “Up Arrow” for Barack Obama: “Facing what he calls ‘a defining moment’ in the country’s history the right man for the right time. Stay loose.” Two slots down on the page, is Michelle Obama: “Smart, classy, real, fun, responsible. Not since Jackie Kennedy. The CW [conventional wisdom] knows she loves America.” Notice Newsweek doesn’t want to remind its readers that she called America a “downright mean country” and said she wasn’t proud of America until her husband started running for president. But without explaining, Newsweek insists on letting the world know she really loves America even if she talks like she hates it, and even if she and her husband hang around with terrorists and hate-America types.

Then on page 37, we have another full-page drawing of Mr. Obama, at the head of an article titled, “The Global Elite” about Newsweek’s version of the 50 most powerful people in the world. The article starts with a discussion of Max Weber’s description of the power of charisma, “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” The author of the piece, Fareed Zakaria, then notes, “Some of Barack Obama’s supporters have at times sounded as if they saw ‘the One’ in these terms. His birth, background and eloquence, they believe, give him almost magical qualities. There’s no doubt that Mr. Obama is intensely charismatic and that it provides him with unusual political capital.” You get the drift. In Newsweek’s view, if Mr. Obama is not the Messiah he is close to one.

Compare that with their treatment of President Bush in this very piece: “Bush’s calm often seems utterly disconnected from the realities around him; he appears thoroughly unaware of the facts on the ground, whether in Iraq, Louisiana or Afghanistan.” Is that so? It was Bush who was connected enough to order the surge, which turned the tide toward victory in Iraq and perhaps in the war on terror. It was Mr. Obama who was so disconnected that he opposed the surge, said it was a failure, refused to admit it was a success even after virtually everyone agreed it was, and who counseled instead a policy of retreat and defeat which would have spelled surrender in the war on terror and catastrophic consequences to almost surely follow.

The author of this particular section, Fareed Zakaria, like most of the Newsweek editors, columnists and reporters, combines total bias and partisanship with wooly, fuzzy and illogical thinking. It takes those qualities in abundance to produce the intellectual garbage that now carries the Newsweek label. Newsweek is worthless as a news source, but its bias and partisanship is so obvious and so strained that it almost provides a source of “Saturday Night Live” style humor.

This issue of Newsweek is all too typical of the highly partisan, biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism of Newsweek and the mainstream media. If you’re still not convinced compare that to what they had to say about Gov. Sarah Palin and a few other Democrats in this same Jan. 5, 2009 issue.

On the “Conventional Wisdom” page which hails Obama as the right man for the right time, here’s what they had to say about Gov. Palin: “Ill-informed, inarticulate shopaholic, has ego bigger than Alaska — and she’s still the darling of the GOP.” That is a lie, a smear, and journalism at its most unfair and imbalanced.

The conventional wisdom on Mr. Bush, a la Newsweek: “Says he’s sorry he failed ‘to change the tone’ in Washington. But he did — he made it worse.” The tone was set by the Democrats who lied by saying, “Bush lied, and our soldiers died.” As this column has documented Mr. Bush did not lie about weapons of mass destruction. He relied on intelligence reports from around the world, and made a judgment that may have been wrong, but was still not a lie. It’s a lie if you know it to be false and still go forward with it. Mr. Bush reached the same conclusion almost all of our allies reached on the same evidence. The Democrats reached the same conclusion on that evidence. But the Democrats also set the tone by waging a political attack against the war they voted for, but abandoned for political reasons, not reasons of conscience or any other reasons worth respect.

On Dick Cheney the Newsweek conventional wisdom: “No one ever called him stupid. An exemplar of how the ‘best and the brightest’ can be the worst and the dumbest.” This is name-calling pure and simple with even a suggestion of backup for such charges.

Newsweek also has a 20-page segment called “The Biggest Losers.” There they go again. On Mrs. Palin: “In a smear that sounds even worse in retrospect, Sarah Palin goes rogue and stirs up prejudice by accusing Barack Obama of ‘palling around with terrorists.’ ” Hey, Newsweek, that wasn’t a smear, but was in fact too kind. He not only palled around with terrorist Bill Ayers and his terrorist wife, but also closely collaborated with him in a grant program designed to radicalize Chicago students. But any criticism of Mr. Obama, however valid, is stirring up prejudice and going rogue. You can’t criticize the Newsweek Messiah.

And another “big loser” is needless to say George Bush: “His low moment in a lousy year: President Bush claims he quit golf in 2008 out of solidarity with the troops — but in fact, he hit the links two months later.” Give me a break, Newsweek.

Notice the biggest losers list does not include Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Newsweek was too busy going after President Bush and Gov. Palin to pay attention to the Illinois governor that President-elect Obama supported even during his second run for governor even though he was already under investigation. If asked, President-elect Obama would be surprised at the Illinois governor’s history of bad behavior, just as he always claimed to be surprised at the behavior of all of the other pals and associates who turned out to be terrorists, bigots, or crook such as the Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Bill “The Terrorist” Ayres, Tony “The Slumlord and Bagman” Rezko, and Father Michael “The Bigot” Pfleger.

To show you how pervasive, pernicious, and petty the bias of Newsweek is consider one more section titled “Perspectives: The Year in Quotes and Cartoons.” You’d think here Newsweek might lighten up a bit, and even print a cartoon and quote that didn’t put Mr. Obama in the halo of a saint. But no, there are cartoons poking fun at President Bush, but any reference to Mr. Obama is all positive. It would be sacreligious to do otherwise. For example, there are two cartoons poking fun at Mr. Bush, but the Messiah is off limits. The one cartoon in which there is a mention of Mr. Obama puts him in the best of lights. It shows three creatures from outer space that have landed a space ship near the White House. A character representing President Bush walks up to them and extends his hand in friendship, but the spaceman replies “On second thought take us to your leader-elect.”

There are also quotations in this “Perspective” section putting President Bush and Sen. John McCain in a bad light. But the Messiah is only quoted to emphasize his greatness and his historic achievement. The Obama quote: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our Founders is alive in our time…tonig ht is your answer.” That’s President-elect Obama on the night he won the presidency, and Newsweek adds he was speaking “before a crowd of more than 100,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park.” Newsweek doesn’t have a word or syllable that’s negative about Obama but is only interested in glorifying, deifying, and canonizing him … having already succeeded in electing him.

There’s more. If you had to think of two of the lowest blows of the campaign, it might be the attempt to smear “Joe the Plumber” for simply asking Mr. Obama a question, and dragging Gov. Palin’s unmarried teenage daughter’s pregnancy into the public square. If you needed more proof of just how sleazy, slimy, slippery, scroungy, and sick Newsweek is, turn to the section of this issue entitled “Closure: Campaign Edition — Not So Ordinary People.”

Even after the campaign is over, Newsweek wants to keep slamming “Joe the Plumber.” In the first entry in this section of “Not So Ordinary People,” they have an update on Joe, and note: “Turns out his real name isn’t Joe, he’s not a licensed plumber and he owes taxes.” You’ll recall Newsweek and the mainstream media couldn’t find any matters of substance with which to discredit Joe, so they dug up these phony “charges.” For example, he’s called “Joe” but his real name is “Samuel.” Big deal amounting to the greatest expose since Watergate … in the eyes of the sickos at Newsweek.

Then the second entry is on Levi Johnson, the future son-in-law of Gov. Palin: “Days after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin becomes McCain’s veep pick, she reveals that her daughter Bristol, 17, is pregnant by Johnson, 18, a high school hockey player who calls himself ‘a f---king redneck’ on his MySpace page. He joins the Palin family onstage, chewing gum, at the GOP convention. The baby is due any minute; the wedding is reported still on. But Johnson has quit school and left Wasilla for a job on Alaska’s North Slope oilfields.”

So Newsweek is not content to drag Gov. Palin’s daughter into the campaign reporting, but now is going after the boy friend, trying to caste him in a bad light. Note the details. He was chewing gum onstage. He uses profanity on his MySpace page. He describes himself as a redneck. And there’s a faint suggestion he’s gone off to work on the North Slope and has abandoned his girl friend. There’s no limit to how low Newsweek can stoop.

And remember that I’ve given you only a small sliver of the biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism that Newsweek packed into this Jan. 5 issue. Newsweek is all-bias-all-the-time on the presidential coverage but on other matters as well.

On another area of bias, consider the real journalistic lowlight of the campaign, now conceded to be a national disgrace even by some of the members of the mainstream media — the pro-Obama and anti-McCain bias of the mainstream media. But when it came to Newsweek picking “The Biggest Losers” meaning those that “set the high-water mark for low-behavior in 2008,” it made a strange choice.

The one journalist listed among the losers is Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report for reporting that Prince Harry was deployed to Afghanistan. Newsweek says this put the Prince’s life at risk. Of course, Newsweek ignores the mainstream media which is siding with the terrorists, putting down the American military, falsely attempting to discredit the president, and doing everything else to weaken America and its standing in the world. I should note that the Drudge Report is the very model of good journalism compared to Newsweek.

Newsweek, as this column has documented on multiple occasions, is a disgrace to journalism and its very name is a living lie. There is no “news” in Newsweek, and it should perhaps be called The Newsweakly.

When the bias of a publication or even most of our publications (the mainstream media) is so far beyond the pale, we have a real threat to the survival of American democracy. If the public gets a picture of the world that is so far from reality and so far divorced from the truth, the decisions of the public and their policymakers will be deeply flawed. We are at a crossroads in history where our very survival is under threat, and we cannot afford to be relying on the output of Newsweek and its ilk.

This calls to mind Mark Twain’s observation: “If you don’t read the newspapers you will be uninformed. If you do read the newspapers you will be misinformed.”

Right now major segments of the public are being misinformed by Newsweek and the rest of the mainstream media, so I can only repeat advice that is critically important. Stop relying on Newsweek and the rest of the mainstream media so you will not be misinformed, as Twain puts it. Look to alternative sources of news and information. Let Newsweek and the rest of the mainstream media know where you stand by not buying their products. At a time like this, it’s almost your patriotic duty to boycott Newsweek and the rest of the mainstream media.

For starters, cancel your subscription to Newsweek, and join the well-organized and important drive to boycott the New York Times by signing the boycott petition at www.boycottnyt.com. That boycott is organized by the media watchdog Accuracy in Media (AIM), and it deserves your support. The New York Times, which has a habit of revealing national security secrets on its front-page, is a perfect target for a boycott. As I’ve documented in this column, the Times, by its biased journalism, has killed more people than Hitler and continues a crusade against America and America’s values.

AIM has set a precedent that should be followed for every member of the biased mainstream media that20seems to crusade against the truth. Someone should organize a boycott of Newsweek, the Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR, NBC, Time and a long list of other mainstream media outlets. We tolerate their brand of journalism at our peril, and we can’t let this journalistic enemy of America continue what it has been doing.

This is the perfect time for an all out boycott of the biased mainstream media. It is sinking fast with its lose of advertisers and viewers. For example, National Public Radio (NPR), a leader in biased journalism, faces a $23 million shortfall and is going through one of its first organization-wide layoffs in 25 years. This is a perfect time for the public to cut off contributions to NPR and to write Congressmen to urge that federal funding to NPR be cut off. The New York Times is also hitting rocky times, with a November drop in advertising of about 20 percent.

It’s time for the public to go after the mainstream media just as they would go after any other enemy of America. In a real sense, the mainstream media represents a greater danger than Islamofascism. We know how to fight Islamofascism. But we are still figuring out how to successfully fight the mainstream media. And we have barely started what we have to do to fight the mainstream media. We better get started now.

One way to get started is to follow the information posted on media watchdog sites. Some I’d recommend are www.mediaresearch.org, www.aim.org, www.camera.org, and www.honestreporting.com.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.

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