It's been exactly a week since Washington Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell wrote her piece admitting bias in the coverage of "all-things-Obama" during the campaign. This particular sentence elicited such a loud, "Ya think???" from me, I scared my damn self:
"But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago."
"But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago."
And wonder of wonders, here we are with the mainstream media engaging in gushing, leg-tingling ObamaLove yet again, still not scrutinizing the President-elect's recent appointee. Lord! It feels like the Bush Administration/Iraq war, parrot-the-company-line coverage all over again!
At least the conservative, Judicial Watch is paying attention. Oh I'm sure some esteemed journalists will characterize them as conservative wing nuts or something, but through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they've got documents backing up what they say in their November 14, Obama Advisor Valerie Jarrett Linked to Real Estate Scandals! (She reminds of another Black woman I know who sold a great idea of "revitalization and restoration" of the Black community and then used the cash to unjustly enrich herself and her family for years. The city council finally paid her off to bow the hell out this year as I recall.)
Even Lynn Sweet (whose work I followed because it always had the "balance" clearly missing from the corporate shills of the large print, radio and television media organizations), seems to have soft-pedaled on Valerie Jarrett. Her November 15 piece, The Valerie Jarrett Story. Named senior Obama White House advisor, was certainly not the kind of truth-telling I'd come to know and love. I mean, if you're going to tell "The Valerie Jarrett Story," shouldn't it be the whole story? Judging from the comments section, I'm not alone in my disappointment.
Were it not for Ms. Sweet's prior reporting on the Chicago crew, The Boston Globe's investigative piece to which I linked in my last post and Ryan Lizza's well-written and informative, "Making It, How Chicago shaped Obama" in The New Yorker last July which was swallowed up in the smoke-screen of outrage at the satirical cover - subjective hype and sketchy, yet masterfully presented voting records would've been all I had to begin trying to objectively quiet that nagging feeling of being worked by the man who looked Black like me.
At this point, I don't expect much from most mainstream media outlets. They've got too much invested in holding up this new administration as the "Second Coming" rather than holding them accountable.
