Former lawyer and law professor Janet Albrechtsen writes a weekly column for the The Australian where she is described as being "roundly disliked by judicial activists, the human rights industry, old-style feminists and assorted rent-seekers."In other words, she's a clear thinker and straight talker.
Here is her take (and it makes for enlightening reading) on the media's irresponsible coverage of Barack Obama.
...While Obama’s toastmaster skills are exceptional, his performance as President is an entirely different and more uncertain matter. Yet if the liberal media’s performance to date is any guide, predetermined judgments in favour of Obama will infect coverage of his presidency.
Now, a distinction must be made here between opinion writers and news reporters. Commentators and opinion writers are expected, indeed usually required, to present a point of view, to make judgments...That is their role in a functioning media.
But when opinion leaks into news coverage and straight analysis, as so often happens, something altogether more dangerous is happening. The media forfeits their place as the fourth estate when they forget their primary duty to report the facts so the average reader, as well the commentariat, can form their own judgments.
Regrettably, much of the mainstream media in the Western world have abandoned this trusted role. They want to be players, not mere observers. Intellectual scepticism, which should sit at the heart of good political analysis, is too often a rarity in an increasingly liberal (in the American sense of that word) media.
During the George W. Bush years, cynicism accompanied much of the media’s reporting of his presidency. During Obama’s term, that cynicism appears almost certain to give way to a predictable pattern of fawning support. Those in the media who were devoted to dishing out criticism of Bush on so many scores for just being Bush will award Obama a free ride from criticism for just being Obama. The not-so-secret deal is that he’s handsome, he’s articulate, he’s left wing and he’s black. So what’s there to criticise?
From my present vantage point in Canada, The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson gave it away when he declared at the weekend in a leading news piece that “a bond has formed between Barack Obama and Americans unlike any we have seen between a new president and the people”.
It seems churlish to ask for evidence of that proposition, and none was given. The media can feel the vibe and that is enough for them. In fact, the real bond is between Obama and the media...Take Obama’s train trip from Philadelphia to Washington, tracking the route Abraham Lincoln took in 1861. Imagine the media’s reaction had Bush mimicked Lincoln in 2000. Back then the media delighted in reporting the protesters along Pennsylvania Avenue. In 2009, the media are lapping up the Obama drama, writing about their tearful reactions, already inclined to see Obama as Lincolnesque in stature. Sure they are both from Illinois. But analysis? None.
Indeed, for Odrama to present himself in this way as Lincoln’s heir hints at the sort of hubris that usually sets in only towards the end of a presidency. To do so at a time in his career when he still has no executive track record of any kind and precious few achievements as a legislator suggests a vast presumptuousness.
But this has gone largely unremarked. For much of the media, the cocktail of colour, left-wing politics and grand rhetoric is enough to secure him immortal presidential greatness, whether or not he achieves anything...
But there is likely to be a deeper, though related, reason for the bias. Progressive politics is essentially an emotional, rather than rational, pursuit. Its foundations rest on altruistic, even utopian, beliefs about the perfectibility of man and society. For progressives, hope triumphs over experience.
That causes leftist politicians to place a large premium on myth-making, rhetoric and romance. And leftist journalists swallow it whole. Results matter much less to both of them...
