- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Here's the thing about the latest Wright business. It *is*, in fact, a story. Obama's former pastor makes some wild claims (whether they are in context of a lot of other stuff that wrings true), comes out swinging, and does so in a way that seems intentionally designed to damage his former protege's campaign for President. The content of what Wright said belongs in the story because it answers the 'why' question about the controversy. Goes to relevance. And the interest comes from, inter alia, why Wright would do this just now.
Of course it's a story. Of course people are going to talk about it, have opinions, think about what it means to their opinion of Obama; they might (hopefully) decide in the end that it doesn't mean very much. If the outlets didn't report on it, if they decided that it was beneath them or that we didn't need to know or it wasn't important, that would most certainly be bias.
So it's a story. What it isn't, really, is an *issue*. That is, it's not something that requires sustained coverage and endless discussion to unpack what is going on there. It isn't an enterprise piece. It's a wire story, a few column inches in major dailies for a day (what is Wright doing? why?), possibly a feature (who is Wright? where do his beliefs come from? who listens to him, follows him, believes him?). Then, we're done. Put that info out there, get it reported so that voter's can make their mind up about it later, then move on to something that has, you know, a little greater priority, deserves more reporter's time and expense reports, etc.
We all know the major news outlets will overshoot this, to put it mildly. That's what's funny about Glenn's post, especially the closer about how we'll still be talking about this for the next seven months.
But for all the caterwauling about Salon's alleged biases, I don't think they have overshot it at all (yet) and don't see any reason to believe they will. And if you think Joan Walsh was out of line to call Wright a narcissist, if you think that's evidence of pro-Clinton bias, then maybe you haven't read Bob Herbert's NYT column today (at sig). You know, Herbert, whose every op-ed on Obama or Clinton has a perfect record of pro-Obama and anti-Clinton (as he himself states).
