Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Couric: Hillary Coverage 'Unfair', 'Biased'

Katie Couric will never be recognized for her analytical skills, Nor is she likely to ever go down as a foremost student of history. However, her latest outburst should convince even the most blinded observers of the national media that that institution has lost whatever vestige of objectivity that it pretends to.

According to the website Media Bistro, Couric was honored by he Sewall-belmonth House and Museum. While there, she took the occasion to comment on the press coverage of the recently-ended campaign by Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the United States. According to Media Bistro,
Some thoughts from Couric at the event:

However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I've ever seen.

Couric went on to say that latent sexism contributed, in part, to Hillary's defeat.


If Couric thinks that the coverage of Senator Clinton was 'the most unfair, biased coverage' she had ever seen, it would seem that she has been blind to the coverage that current President George W. Bush has been receiving for the entirety of his seven-and-a-half years in office so far. If Couric had any knowledge of history, she would know that this is the most hostile Press Corps any president has faced since Richard Nixon. And in Nixon's case, there was some good reason- the man was a crook. However, in Bush's case, there has yet to be offered any rational reason for the Press' amazing hostility and their ferocious hatred of the man. If Couric can only moan about the coverage of Hillary (which was mostly positive until Obama emerged as a legitimate challenger, and still is far more positive than that received by any Republican, including Presidential nominee John McCain), then she displays her own lack of knowledge in the areas of history and context. And this is the person that we are supposed to trust with the duty of accurately and objectively reporting to us the events of the day?

As for Couric's moan about 'latent sexism', the Democratic Party and their willing enablers in the media have long been completely invested in the politics of class, sex and race. If Obama had not happened to be black, it is my firm belief that Clinton would have continued to sail unimpeded to the nomination. However, she had the misfortune to be running against a member of the one group of victim who have a stronger pull than women- blacks. I do not believe that Barack Obama's sex had anything to do with his victory- other than the fact that he is younger than Senator Clinton.

No, I suspect that the reason Clinton lost had nothing to do with sexism- latent or otherwise. Obama is younger, apparently more attractive to women than Clinton is to men, and a far better orator. And of course, he is racially identified as black. Clinton on the other hand, arouses strong emotions, much of which are negative. She is not seen as trustworthy, and is certainly not going to fire anyone up as Obama does on a regular basis. In the Democratic Party, it is all about winning- regardless of the costs. Obama was seen as a better shot to beat the Republicans and return the White House to it's rightful occupants, thus the Press turned on Clinton to help Obama sew up the nomination as quickly as possible. Had Obama not been in the race, I believe the Press would have been as firmly in Clinton's pocket as they have in the past. And if Katie Couric does not understand that, then she has proved once again how unfit she is to be a news anchor and why the mainstream media is losing subscribers and viewers in droves.

No comments: