O
RANT
OR RAVE
HUFFINGTON
09.09.12
On a long flight to Los Angeles in early August,
Rupert Murdoch cracked open Edward Klein’s
The Amateur, a scathing indictment of President
Barack Obama and a summer New York Times best
seller. ¶The book had already been heavily promoted by the media mogul’s New York Post, Fox
News Channel and Fox Business Network. Murdoch, like some of the hosts he employs on Fox,
clearly enjoyed the book and later told his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers that “every voter should read” it.
Well, maybe not every voter.
The Amateur is more likely to appeal to voters predisposed to seeing
Obama described as a “thin-skinned,”
“a narcissist,” and a “bungler-in-chief”
—someone who pushes “far-left policies,” suffers from “extreme haughtiness
and excessive pride,” “lacks faith in the
goodness of American leadership,” and
is the “most divisive president in recent
American history.” Or voters, who like
Klein, have ever wondered: “Will Americans finally come to recognize the dark
side of Barack Obama in the presidential
election of 2012?”
In today’s polarized media, where partisan divisions become more apparent as
the 2012 election draws near, one cable
network or website’s must-read is another’s ignored screed. They say you’re
not entitled to your own facts, but that
isn’t always clear on cable news, where
viewers can seemingly be watching two
very different elections at the same time.
As a result, books on Obama and his administration—or individual scenes from
them—can be heavily promoted on one
network, while receiving very different
play, or none at all, on another.
“In cable television, Fox’s and MSNBC’s coverage of the candidates’ character themes are mirror images of each
other,” according to Pew’s Project for
Excellence in Journalism released a
study on Aug. 23. While “Fox has offered
a mixed view of Romney, its assessments
of Obama’s record and character have
run negative by a measure of 6 to 1.”
Conversely, it found, “the numbers are
almost identical, in reverse, for MSNBC.”