Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media

by Ishmael Reed

  This remark explains why Fox continued to portray Obama as a terrorist.

  Later, during the debate over health legislation, Fox News was responsible for spreading false information about the legislation. On October 20, 2009, indefatigable media watcher, Richard Prince, cited a Pew Poll.

  The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, reporting on the health-care reform bills in Congress, reported in August that ‘Among those who say they regularly get their news from Fox News, 45 percent say claims of death panels are true, while 30 percent say they are not true. By contrast, majorities among regular viewers of rival cable news channels MSNBC and CNN and nightly network news say they think it is false that health care legislation will create “death panels.” There are no such “death panels” in the legislation.

  An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that the same misinformation took hold among Fox News viewers about whether the health-care plan will cover illegal immigrants.

  Richard Prince also cited Jacob Weisberg on Fox. “Weisberg argues in Newsweek that ‘What matters is the way that Fox’s model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings,’ Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes ‘has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn’t just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.’” CNN wasn’t much better. On Sunday, October 18, during a panel discussion, David Gergen, a Washington insider tried to explain why the public was against the public option. The next day, Monday, an ABC/Washington poll reported that fifty-seven percent of the public supported a public option.

  The candidacy of this Celtic-African-American president drew the racist poisons from the American psyche and they crawled out like the slime that oozes from the innards of those victims in the Exorcist movies. Examples:

  · A sign was posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a “free public hanging.”

  · In North Carolina, racist graffiti targeting Obama was found in a tunnel near the North Carolina State University campus.

  · In a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited one-dollar entries into “The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,” saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. “Let’s hope we have a winner,” said the sign. A law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that during the campaign there was a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet—“a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it.”

  · In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist threats against Obama and sparked fears of an assassination plot during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008.

  · Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos.

  · In Milwaukee, police officials found a poster of Obama with a bullet going toward his head—discovered on a table in a police station.

  One of the most popular white-supremacist Web sites got more than two thousand new members the day after the election, compared with ninety-one new members on Election Day, according to an AP count. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line November 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received after Election Day. On Saturday, one Stormfront poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, “I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how ‘messiahs’ come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed.” The taunts and threats continue.

  Despite these threats, pundits continue to complain that the media were giving Obama a free ride. Howard Kurtz, Lou Dobbs, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson and other pundits kept up the mantra that Obama had caused the media to “swoon” over Obama, while giving Sarah Palin and John McCain a hard time. Studies from the Shorenstein Center, George Mason University and LexisNexis concluded otherwise. As late as Sunday, December 28, Kurtz was continuing to describe the media’s attitude toward Barack Obama as “sympathetic,” and none of his fellow panelists Jessica Yellin, Terence Smith, Bill Pressman and Amy Holmes challenged him. Ms. Holmes, a Zambia-born black woman whom the network bosses shuttle from panel to panel for the purpose of dissing the black underclass and Barack Obama, agreed. (Once in awhile she is handled by the fellows over at The National Review where she was brought on to diss Obama. She said of Obama’s race speech, at their site, National Review Online: “My first reaction? Race speeches are rarely good, and this was no exception. For all of Obama’s new talk of change, courage, politics you can believe in, I heard a whole lot of liberal boilerplate dressed up in euphemism and offering no fresh solutions.”)

  Studies by reputable organizations, whose goal is not that of drawing ratings by putting down blacks, differ from the conclusions about the media treatment of Obama. On July 27, 2008, James Rainey, writer for the Los Angeles Times wrote:

  Cable talking heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias—but a think tank finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain in recent weeks. Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of conventional wisdom last week.

  Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.

  During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28 percent of the statements were positive for Obama and 72 percent negative.

  I wrote last week that the networks should do more to better balance the airtime. But I also suggested that much of the attention to Obama was far from glowing.

  But the center’s director, Robert Lichter, who has won conservative hearts with several of his previous studies, told me the facts were the facts.

  Another myth promoted by the media held that Hillary Clinton received less favorable treatment than Obama during the primaries. This claim by Mrs. Clinton and her followers led to the candidacy of Sarah Palin, whose choice was made cynically by the Republican Party. They wanted to woo disaffected Clinton voters who believed that Mrs. Clinton was robbed of the nomination when, in terms of delegate strength, she was done after Wisconsin. Her claim and that of her followers that she was the victim of unfavorable press coverage is disputed by a study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism issued on May 29, 2008:

  If campaigns for president are in part a battle for control of the master narrative about character, Democrat Barack Obama has not enjoyed a better ride in the press than rival Hillary Clinton, according to a new study of primary coverage by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

  From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns.

  The trajectory of the coverage, however, began to turn against Obama, and did so well before questions surfaced about his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical—and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May.

  Yet, with all
of this evidence pointing to the rough media terrain that Obama had to navigate on the way to his election, as late as December 28, 2008, Howard Kurtz was complaining about the “sympathetic” treatment that the media accorded Obama. None of his guests—Terence Smith, Bill Pressman, and Jessica Yellin—challenged Kurtz. Amy Holmes agreed.

  As if to put this reasoning to a test, on the same day The Washington Post and the Associated Press gave a sympathetic treatment to Chip Saltsman, a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee who sent out a CD that included the song Barack the Magic Negro. He said that it was only meant to be satire.

  For the media, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former Marine, was the epitome of hate. Imus Alumni Howard Kurtz, who has said that in private he and his friends agree with what Imus says, went completely bonkers against Rev. Wright on his Reliable Sources, December 13. He accused Rev. Wright of “fulminating. Of engaging in diatribes, rants, and hate filled speeches,” the kind of criticism of black male intellectuals by whites that we’ve heard for over one hundred years, even James Baldwin, an elegant, French speaking jewel of a man was called “antagonistic,” while Pope Benedict was treated by a fawning media as though he were truly an emissary of a god. While condemning Rev. Wright, Chris Matthews said of Pope Benedict: “I think this new Pope, just on a very cosmetic level, is amazing. He’s 78 years old. I remembered him being talked about when we studied Vatican II back at the Holy Cross in the 60s. Ratzinger was a major figure. And here he is now radiant, looking strong, solid… what a leader he looks like.” For them, Rev. Wright’s offense was condemning the United States and enumerating atrocities committed by its government. Pope Benedict, when cardinal, tried to cover up one of the greatest scandals confronting the Catholic Church. The following story appeared on the site of The Daily Kos, April 19, 2005, at 03:43:27 p.m. PDT:

  [A] 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of “strictest” secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.

  They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to “be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.”

  […] bishops are instructed to pursue these cases “in the most secretive way… restrained by a perpetual silence… and everyone… is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office… under the penalty of excommunication.”

  Lawyers point to a letter the Vatican sent to bishops in May 2001 clearly stating the 1962 instruction was in force until then. The letter is signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, the most powerful man in Rome beside the Pope and who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the office which ran the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.

  What we do know from his letter is that as recently as 2001, he supported and encouraged the drawing of a curtain of secrecy over widespread sexual abuse by clergy.

  During the media’s all-pope-week, former altar boy Chris Matthews compared the values of Rev. Wright, the subject of a relentless vicious smear and media inquisition, unfavorably with those of Pope Benedict.

  Apparently a minister saying “God Damn America” in a speech that the media quoted out of context—like an adolescent reading Hustler, they’re only interested in the meaty parts—is more offensive than a pope, who, when cardinal, tried to cover up a scandal, which has resulted in thousands of victims suffering from post-traumatic stress.

  Moreover, since the media slapped the killer label anti-Semite on some of Rev. Wright’s comments, why, during a week in which Fox TV’s Brit Hume described the Pope as a man of “beatific sweetness,” was there no reference to Pope Benedict’s drawing a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League for his revival of the Latin Mass, which calls for the conversion of the Jews. The Anti-Defamation League said the Pope’s decision was “a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations.” The Observer quoted Abraham Foxman the national director in Rome.

  We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly forty years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday mass, it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted. It is the wrong decision at the wrong time. It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the church that rejects change and reconciliation.

  After the election of the president, Benedict was criticized by Jewish groups for un-excommunicating a bishop who had denied the Holocaust, and for proposing sainthood for Pope Pius XII. On December 21, 2009, AFP reported that the Wiesenthal Center was “shocked at Pius sainthood moves.”

  The founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center voiced dismay and disappointment Monday at weekend Vatican moves to raise controversial wartime pope Pius XII to sainthood.

  The Vatican sparked anger in Jewish communities worldwide with moves to nudge Pius—whose beatification process was launched in 1967—closer to sainthood, its ultimate honor.

  The Catholic Church argues that Pius saved many Jews who were hidden away in religious institutions, and that his silence during the Holocaust—when millions of Jews were exterminated by Germany’s Nazi regime—was born out of a wish to avoid aggravating their situation.

  But others believe Pius’s inaction when it mattered to the lives of so many was appallingly wrong.

  “I’m sort of amazed,” Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a prominent Jewish human rights group, told AFP.

  “It has become our business, because in my opinion, there would be a great distortion of history” were Pius XII to be elevated to sainthood, he said.

  “Pius XII sat in stony silence” as the most egregious crimes against Jews took place. In 1941, when massacres began, “you’d expect to see a thick file” of cases in which he sought to intervene.

  “But you do not,” Hier noted. In addition, Pius’s predecessor, Pius XI, wrote an encyclical about anti-Semitism. Yet instead of publishing it or drawing attention to it, Pius XII buried it, Hier noted.

  “These were turbulent times. You had people who stood up to dictators. Pius (XII) did not,” Hier stressed.

  During this campaign, comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and Bill Maher and shows like The View did the job that the corporate media and its hirelings were too intimidated to do. The right’s coming down hard on Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann for their comments about the Republicans prompted NBC heads to travel to Minneapolis hat in hand and beg forgiveness from these Republican bullies. For going along to get along, Imus defender David Gregory was given the plum job as host of Meet The Press. Of Pope Benedict, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, Bill Maher said, “Whenever a cult leader sets himself up as God’s infallible wing man here on Earth, lock away the kids,” he laughed. “I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult,” Maher said. “Its leader also has a compound, and this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats.” By contrast, MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell and CNN’s Kyra Phillips tee-heed all over themselves as they anticipated the Pope’s plane landing in Washington. This is the Kyra Phillips who said that she was “outraged” by the way Michael Vick treated those pit bulls (and asked a black guest whether dog fighting was “cultural.”) She cares more about the fate of pit bulls than the victims of child abuse. Jonathan Capehart, who like Juan Williams was brought on by the white men who run the media to diss Rev. Wright, said that he was “nervous” about what to call the Pope. “Your highness?” “Your holiness?”

  CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, one of those who worked the Wright story to death, could have questioned the pope about the pedophilia cover-up and the revival of the Latin Mass, but he said that he was so much in “awe” of the Po
pe that he was rendered speechless when he and other journalists were invited to question the Pope.

  ABC’s Cokie Roberts hitched a ride with the Bushes who were on the way to greeting the Pope. Mrs. Roberts complained during one session of ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos about Barack Obama’s audacity to run for president during a year when it was possible for a woman to be elected. She was clearly annoyed.

  While Barack Obama and Rev. Wright were twinned (ads also appeared linking him to O.J. Simpson and Kwame Kilpatrick), the associations of John McCain, who once called the media his base, were underplayed.

  Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote about McCain’s appearance before the Associated Press: “The putative Republican presidential nominee was given a box of doughnuts and a standing ovation. The likely Democratic nominee was likened to a terrorist.” (An AP questioner that day mistakenly referred to the Al Qaeda mastermind as “Obama bin Laden.” At one point, Stephanopoulos asked McCain about his soliciting the support of Rev. Hagee who has made anti-Catholic statements. McCain said that Rev. Hagee was good for Israel even though his position is similar to that of the Latin Mass, that Jews must be converted in order for the Rapture to occur. George Stephanopoulos doesn’t know this apparently and asked no follow-up question. Unlike Obama, who distanced himself from the comments of Rev. Wright, McCain said that he disagreed with Hagee’s position, but still welcomed his endorsement, which he solicited. Predictably, there was no ratings-driven outrage resulting from McCain’s reaffirming his embrace of Rev. Hagee.