The lucrative business of Obama-bashing
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
Four days before Barack Obama was sworn into office, a prominent radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, told his conservative listeners that a major American publication had asked him to write 400 words on his hopes for the Obama presidency.
“I…don’t need 400 words,” he said, “I need four: I hope he fails.”
The remark set the tone for a steady stream of unbridled and often bizarre criticism from Limbaugh and like-minded radio and TV commentators, several of them working for Fox News, the network owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Obama responded four days after his inauguration, telling a group of Republican congressmen they needed to break away from a mindset of confrontation.
“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”
What followed should have helped the new administration to reflect on the wisdom of singling out a media critic. But it didn’t. Limbaugh promptly portrayed himself as a man of such pivotal importance that the president of the world’s only superpower needed to pay personal attention to his tartly-worded opinion.
The controversy over his ill wishes for the president caused, as he put, his ratings to go “through the roof,” a reassuring development for a man who makes $38 million a year under an eight-year contract that runs through 2016. The score of that early skirmish: Limbaugh 1, Obama 0.
I’d say that all news networks in the US are pretty horrible. They all have their agendas, biases, and official lines of reporting. I do like Reuters as it seems more objective than the others. But just as the liberal media did with Bush bashing why would it be unfair for conservative media to bash Obama. The viewership for Fox is higher, because it’s normal that when the curent president is a liberal, the liberal media won’t report objectively on him. Same is true of conservative media and Bush… The sad part is that current administration is so vocal about their dissatisfaction with Fox. It makes them look petty. Especially during present times when people are eagerly expecting results, from a president who promissed so much.