Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Is The Press On Vacation?
Is the press on vacation? I haven't heard or read much of anything critical since around January 21st. I can only assume the press is taking some time off after the hectic season of supporting the Obama candidacy.
Seriously, there is a very different tone apparent in articles in newspapers around the country. James Taranto discussed this on his blog for the Wall Street Journal. He referred to it as the change by the Associated Press (AP) from "accountability journalism" to "pliability journalism".
That is an interesting premise and seems to be more than a little bit true. The press has been very kind to our new president and maybe it is simply the contrast between today and two weeks ago. But, I sense that the AP, that drives many of the stories we read in our newspapers, has taken a decidedly softer tone with the new president.
I will be quite interested to see just how this goes when President Obama makes some decision of which the press is not joyfully supportive. Then again, that may take some time since the mainstream media has seemed to be quite liberal in its leaning for some time now. It may well be that we could go until July before we see something critical of an Obama position. It seemed that President Bush was incapable of doing anything right.
It is true that there is usually a 'honeymoon' period extended to most newly elected presidents. That has tended to run out to as far as the first 100 days in many cases. Sometimes it ended sooner and sometimes it may have extended a bit further.
So, if this 'happy press' situation runs beyond May 1st, we may well have seen the advent of "pliability journalism". I wonder if that will help sell more newspapers?
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