Monday's "news" article about US President Obama's current political fortunes was a source of amusement and sadness. Amusement, because one could easily believe his re-election campaign team wrote it; and sadness, for the very same reason. Journalism's highest and noblest calling lies in its objective treatment of individuals and events. Such treatment allows readers to see two or more sides of an issue and then draw their own conclusions. The international news page of the Times has, sadly, preferred full-throated boosterism to objectivity when it comes to Obama. The Times, and journalism generally, suffers for it.
The Times could have, over the past five years, mentioned things like:
*Obama won his 1996 campaign to be the Democrat candidate for Illinois state senator by having all the other candidates removed from the ballot;
*Obama pushed his 2010 health care reform act through Congress despite the fact that a majority of Americans opposed it;
*Obama's spending habits have amassed a federal debt of $15 trillion, a amount of money almost equal to the gross domestic product of the country and putting every American household in debt to the tune of $128,300 (about one million Emalangeni);
*Obama's Democrat party took a "shellacking" (his own word) in the November 2010 mid-term elections, a defeat generally attributed to voter dissatisfaction with Obama's first two years;
*Obama recently denied permission to build a pipeline to carry Canadian crude oil across the United States-a job that would provide thousands of US jobs in a job-starved time;
*Time magazine's Mark Halperin, commenting on Obama's pipeline decision, said "I think it is reflective of the fact he has not brought the country together on controversial issues which he promised to do.”
*ABC News reported on-line that the "tick off" between Arizona governor Brewer and Obama ran the other direction-with Brewer pointing a scolding finger at the president. Brewer was reportedly annoyed at the president for not taking seriously her concerns about border control (Arizona is a border state) at an earlier meeting between them.
Instead of mentioning such newsworthy details, Monday's Times gave us the headline "President Obama More Popular". Readers of Swaziland's "newspaper of record" will recognize this pattern in the Times. Expressing enthusiasm for a candidate or elected official is part of the election process, and has its place in the opinion section of a newspaper; but the news sections of a journal like the Times should carry clear-eyed reports and balanced analysis, not endorsements.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
