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Obama faces media backlash
21/02/2008 21:29 - (SA)
Washington - Barack Obama, the wunderkind of US politics, has long basked in adulatory press coverage for his historic White House bid - but a media backlash appears to be building.
Hillary Clinton, Obama's bitter rival for the Democrats' presidential nomination, has long complained that the young Illinois senator is getting a free ride from journalists in thrall to his promise of change.
"Obama is the new story this year and reporters love novel plotlines," said Darrell West, a political scientist and media expert at Brown University in Rhode Island.
"But as it gets closer to the nomination, there is going to be more scrutiny of him. Reporters are going to examine his statements, his votes and his background," he told AFP.
MSNBC presenter Joe Scarborough, a former Republican representative, has commented admiringly on Obama's ability to rally independents and even Republicans to his cause. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said.
The candidate himself denies that he has received an easy ride, noting that for much of last year the coverage was not so excitable when he was focussed on nuts-and-bolts stump issues.
Obama compared to Ronald Reagan
"We got good press (at first) because we raised more money than people had expected," Obama said late last month. "And then there was a big stretch of about six months when we couldn't do anything right.
"We were not complaining when other candidates were touted as inevitable and their campaigns were flawless and we were the gang that couldn't shoot straight. So I just think we have to keep it in perspective."
Still, Obama brings to mind the original "Teflon president," Ronald Reagan, to whom scandal failed to stick and whose talent for communication lives on in the Illinois senator.
The Clinton campaign has struggled to whip up media interest in Obama's financial links to a Chicago businessman, Antoin Rezko, who is due to go on trial for fraud next month.
The New York senator has gained traction more recently for her accusation that Obama has plagiarised other politicians' speeches, although that piece of spin did nothing to halt Obama's momentum in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
Television networks cut away from Clinton mid-speech on the night of the Wisconsin primary as Obama stole her thunder at a victory rally in Texas, a small but telling sign of the shift in media attention from last year.
Fox News last month aired false claims that he had attended a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia, and its right-wing pundits like to note that his middle name is Hussein.
In an article headlined "The Obama Delusion," Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson said the senator "seems to have hypnotised much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story."
"The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't."
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