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“Pastor Problem” or Media Problem?

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News Judgment Differs on Priest’s Remarks

A visiting white Catholic priest who supports Sen. Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright denounces Sen. Hillary Clinton from the pulpit of Obama’s church, saying Clinton feels frustrated because of her sense of white entitlement. Obama is not in the church, and hasn’t been for months.

Is this news, and if so, how big is it? How relevant is the fact that the speaker is white? Is what he said “racist”? How does this story help voters decide who should lead the country?

News organizations split on the answers after a video of the Rev. Michael Pfleger’s Sunday remarks made the rounds of the Internet via YouTube. Obama issued a statement denouncing them and Pfleger apologized. The Clinton campaign voiced its outrage.

The tabloid Chicago Sun-Times made it front-page news Friday. The broadsheet Chicago Tribune put the story on Page 23.

The stories ranged from 553 words from the Associated Press to 240 words in the New York Times and 777 words in the Washington Post, played inside in both papers among the political coverage.

On broadcast television, “Morning shows all gave prominent, negative coverage . . . On NBC’s ‘Today,’ David Gregory said Pfleger’s rant is a problem, though ‘maybe it’s manageable,’ ” Mark Halperin of Time magazine reported Friday on his political tip sheet, “The Page.”

But the starkest contrast came on cable television between Fox News and MSNBC, which is carving out a niche as Fox’s polar opposite.

“Up next: The far right trying to create a new pastor problem for Barack Obama,” Dan Abrams told viewers Thursday night on his MSNBC show, “Verdict.” “Tonight, FOX News and others are playing video of another pastor at Obama’s church, talking about white people and entitlement as he mocks Hillary Clinton. . . . for Fox News, come on. This is red meat, tonight, doing their best to make this as big as possible.”

And indeed, on Fox’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” the host introduced her segment this way:

“Tonight: What do you think about this, clapping and cheering as a priest spews racist remarks from a church pulpit, racist about Senator Hillary Clinton and racist towards white Americans in general? Well, it happened last Sunday inside Senator Obama’s Chicago church. Now, Senator Obama was not there, but this is creating a controversy provoking statements from the priest and also from Senator Obama. This time, the speaker — well, it’s not Reverend Wright. It is Father Michael Pfleger, a priest who is a Senator Obama supporter. Father Pfleger had been on the Catholics for Obama volunteer advisory committee, but he stepped down a few weeks ago.

“Now, listen to what Pastor Pfleger had to say on Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Christ.”

Then came the video clip.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is our brother. He is none other than Father Michael Pfleger! We welcome him once again!

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER, ST. SABINA CHURCH, CHICAGO: He is honest enough to address the one who says, ‘Well, don’t hold me responsible for what my ancestors did.’ But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did. But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did. And unless you are ready to give up the benefits, throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the money that’s been put away in the company you walked into because your daddy and your granddaddy and your great — unless you’re willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation because you are the beneficiaries of this insurance policy!

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER: And unless you are ready to give up the benefits, throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the money that’s been put away in the company you walked into because your daddy and your granddaddy and your great — unless you’re willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation because you are the beneficiaries of this insurance policy!

We must be honest enough to expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head. I said before — and I — I really don’t want to make this political because you know I’m very unpolitical.

(LAUGHTER)

PFLEGER: But (INAUDIBLE) when — when Hillary was crying…

(LAUGHTER)

PFLEGER: … and people said that was put on, I really don’t believe it was put on. I really believe that she just always thought, ‘This is mine.’

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER: ‘I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white. And this is mine! I just got to get up and step into the plate.’ And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama!’ And she said, ‘Oh, damn! Where did you come from?’

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER: ‘I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show! Waaahhhhh!’

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER: She wasn’t the only one crying! There was a whole lot of white people crying!

(APPLAUSE AND CHEERS)

PFLEGER: I’m sorry. I don’t want to get you in any more trouble. The live streaming just went out again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

On Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes,” the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who is black, said, “That this is another example of racism being taught from the pulpit. It is not uncommon that in many of the black churches you hear racist comments coming from the black preachers. It’s unfortunate but they are catering to the racist attitude of black Americans toward white Americans.”

Dick Morris, the disgraced former political adviser to Bill Clinton, said in another segment, “OK. Look, I’ve been — my wife and I have been writing for months now that Hillary Clinton does, indeed, feel a sense of entitlement. This nomination is hers. It is rightfully hers. She’s waited for it for eight years. She’s been married to the president. She’s ready for it, which is a phrase she used in the campaign. She’s entitled to it.

“And there is, undoubtedly, a sense of shock and denouement at this guy coming to take it away. Now that is not, obviously, primarily fueled by race. It’s fueled by her role in the establishment, her money raising.”

Morris said later, “in a sense, white America is now getting a glimpse of what goes on within the black community and passes for socially acceptable rhetoric. Rhetoric that would never be tolerated in the white community anymore.”

On MSNBC, Abrams played a tape of Fox News’ Brit Hume intoning, “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is distancing himself tonight from another Chicago minister over a sermon that was preached at Obama’s Trinity United Church this past weekend. So, we appear to have a new reverend controversy swirling around the Obama campaign.”

 

April Ryan

“So, we appear to have a new — I mean, it’s all so — I don’t know,” Abrams said. “I mean, look, we all hype things to some degree but this just seems to me like classic right-wing propaganda. April, give me the objective assessment,” he said, turning to April Ryan, who covers the White House for American Urban Radio Networks.

“Objective, yes,” she said. “What is happening, and as you know, the effort is now to knock out Barack Obama. He is, for all intents and purposes, probably the Democratic nominee and we’ll find that out a little later in a couple of days or so. But nonetheless, you know, they are trying to knock him out now. And anything that they can use, the Republicans will use, and that`s the obvious case. That`s the objective case. I mean it’s plain and simple.”

ABRAMS: Here’s going to be the test, all right? Here’s the test. Fox News, when it came to Rev. Wright, did breaking news every night on his travel schedule — Rev. Wright’s travel schedule, all right? Let’s see how much they do on — you know, “Breaking news tonight, the Rev. Pfleger has decided to move one of his appearances from a convention center to a — “you know, that’s what I think we’re going to see here. We shall see.

RYAN: But Dan, depending upon the relationship, what we find out more about the relationship, it really doesn’t have legs unless there is a very, very close relationship. With, you know — with Rev. Wright, it was very close.

Roy Sekoff, founding editor of the Huffington Post, said, “Oh, Dan, let’s agree from the beginning that this entire campaign has been the worst recruiting ad for purported men of God since Jim Jones started passing out the Kool-Aid.”

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Sorry, Scott McClellan, “You Are . . . at Fault . . .”

“I’m not a big fan of press secretaries who turn rat. You’re either with your guy or you’re not,” Eric Easter wrote Thursday on ebonyjet.com.

 

“Politics is a game of loyalty. You can hate your boss after leaving — and you will — but you keep it to yourself and those who will keep it quiet. I’ve criticized my old bosses publicly, but on their politics, which is fair game. Private moments stay private, as they should.”

Easter, who served as media consultant for the presidential bids of Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson and Doug Wilder, as well as the successful Mark Warner campaign for governor of Virginia, was writing about the new book by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, in which McClellan says President Bush “signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest.”

“The big problem with press secretaries is that so few know what a press secretary is supposed to do,” Easter continued.

“Press secretaries too often let themselves fall into the role of PR person and/or press liaison, when what you really should be is a strategist. The role of a press secretary is not to spin the message, but to shape the action in the planning stage. In other words, get close enough to the action to argue for people to do the right thing (or at least the smart thing that looks right) at the beginning so that when it goes down, the press will do your spin for you.

“If you don’t have that role in the inner circle, it is your obligation to develop that role, not to scream to the public that bad decisions were made. Sorry, Scott, but you are as much at fault at the edge of the room as at the center.”

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Media Narratives of Obama, Clinton Both “Positive”

“If campaigns for president are in part a battle for control of the master narrative about character, Democrat Barack Obama has not enjoyed a better ride in the press than rival Hillary Clinton, according to a new study of primary coverage by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University,” the project reported on Thursday.

“From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal — apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns.

“The trajectory of the coverage, however, began to turn against Obama, and did so well before questions surfaced about his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical — and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May.

“On the Republican side, John McCain, the candidate who quickly clinched his party’s nomination, has had a harder time controlling his message in the press. Fully 57% of the narratives studied about him were critical in nature, though a look back through 2007 reveals the storyline about the Republican nominee has steadily improved with time.”

In another analysis, the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi, writing in the June/July issue of the American Journalism Review, observed, “The widespread perception of media unfairness doesn’t necessarily confirm the existence of it.”

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Obama Blasts Dobbs, Limbaugh on Immigration

“Speaking to supporters in Palm Beach last week, Barack Obama blasted a couple of media personalities by name,” Ruben Navarrette noted in his column in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Wednesday.

 

Lou Dobbs

“‘A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year,’ Obama said. ‘If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen.’

“It’s about time. That some cable hosts and radio talkers grow their ratings by pandering to the anti-immigrant crowd is no big secret.

“Not surprisingly, supporters of Dobbs and Limbaugh went on the attack. They insisted that Obama had overstated the statistics. . . .”

Obama’s Florida comments were not the first time he had criticized Dobbs. A January NewsMax.com story noted that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and an aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had also jabbed at the CNN host over the immigration issue.

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Murdoch Says He’s Impressed by “Rock Star” Obama

“Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said he was impressed by Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama’s ‘rock star’ status and found that his Republican rival, John McCain, ‘has a lot of problems,'” Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday.

“‘You have possibly the making of a phenomenon in this country,’ Murdoch said without actually mentioning Obama by name, at the ‘All Things Digital’ conference held Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal in Carlsbad, California.

“‘Politicians and Washington are at an all time low, they are despised by 80 percent of the public … And you’ve got a candidate who is … trying to put himself above it all … and he’s become a rock star. It’s fantastic.’

“The News Corp. chairman admitted he had some influence over the New York Post’s endorsement of Obama, 46, over Hillary Clinton, 60, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

Watch the video.

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Critic Rates WFAA Tops in Dallas Diversity

Which of Dallas-Fort Worth’s major TV news providers are doing the best and worst jobs of both hiring minorities and giving them prominent on-camera roles?

On his blog Thursday, longtime Dallas television critic Ed Bark, answering his question, gave KDFW-TV (Fox) a B-minus, KXAS (NBC) a C-plus, WFAA-TV (ABC) an A-minus and KTVT-TV (CBS) a C.

“Let’s note that I’m a 60-year-old white male from Racine, WI. Neither of my late parents finished high school, and I went to college entirely at my own expense after serving in the U.S. Marines. I obviously don’t know what it’s like to be black, Hispanic or Asian. But I do know a little something about working my way up — and down — without any ‘connections’ to fall back on,” Bark wrote.

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MSNBC Posts “Multiracial in America” Series

MSNBC has posted a series, “Gut Check: Multiracial in America,” that “examines the growth in the number of Americans living in multiracial families and the first-hand experiences and issues they face,” the network announced on Wednesday.

Among the components:

This columnist is moderating a panel, “What Is Race?” at the Unity convention in Chicago on Friday, July 25, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. A successor to a workshop of the same name at last year’s National Association of Black Journalists convention, panelists will be Sam Ford, reporter at WJLA-TV in Washington, a Cherokee Freedman; Yolanda Moses, anthropology professor at the University of California, Riverside, adviser for the Race Project; Karen Narasaki, president, Asian American Justice Center, Washington; and Lori S. Robinson, editor, VidaAfroLatina.com.
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Short Takes

 

Barbara Rodgers

 

Mohamad Bazzi
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