The narrative begins.
Let the chambers echo with TV news personalities in the morning saying this is Obama's Katrina.
I remember in the days leading up to the Iraq War that certain articles struck me as simply odd in the press. The NYTimes pieces that pointed to WMDs seemed forced, though I had trouble believing that the paper of record would be slanting stories.
So we see now in the last day or so the beginning once again of a careful (yes, more nuanced than the blatant nonsense published by Miller in the Iraq drum-up) construction of the narrative. Will this oil spill be seen as a travesty brought on by greedy international corporations, or an inept Democratic government led by the high-speakin', low performing President Obama. Yes, dear friends, watch the talking heads bobble tomorrow about the parallels to Katrina. New Orleans is dying again, tarred black and preventing a recovery from the most recent disaster.
People will rightfully be angry. They will get even angrier as they see what a HUGE, unparrallelled natural disaster this is. But the work has begun to distract attention from the culprit. Ok, hard to ignore that BP had something to do with this, but if we can't erase that from people's minds, let's add the poor government response! This is really the fault of Obama.
So here we go again, news slants/agenda obvious and planted, but not from Judith Miller (oh, the heroine who went to jail for her "journalistic ethics!") this time, but NYTimes right-wing advocate posing as reporter-of-facts, Campbell Robertson.
The Obama administration has publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher, yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.
The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was "a spill of national significance," and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.
The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.
Already right-wing bloggers are sharpening knives, oddly gleeful that the federal government hadn't acted earlier.
Point is, journalists have a point of view, and I think Campbell's POV too regularly infects the reporting. Whether it's intentional or not, it's evident to anyone who takes the time to look at headlines, like in this case, "U.S. Missed Chances to Act on Oil Spill," which in this case seems to equally fault the Obama Administration as British Petroleum.
In a quick search for other examples of POV bleed from Mr. Robertson, I found this example from last October :
"President’s doing a good job as far as I’m concerned," Mr. Bienaime, 71, said. "And he ain’t even been there a year."...
But the praise for Mr. Obama’s work has, in recent days, been eclipsed by criticism of his visit.
Mr. Obama, who visited the city five times during his presidential campaign and attacked Mr. Bush for his response to Hurricane Katrina, is spending only a few hours here — at the charter school and at a campus of the University of New Orleans, where he is holding a town-hall-style meeting — before flying to San Francisco for a fund-raiser. He is not visiting the storm-ravaged areas in Mississippi.
Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican from southeastern Louisiana, held a news conference in which he called Mr. Obama’s visit a "drive-through daiquiri summit." Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, wrote a critical five-page letter to the president. Mississippi editorial writers are not pleased either.
All this to say, watch carefully how the blame shifts conveniently this week from irresponsible corporate greed to inept government. This is the spin that shapes the anger and frustration of the people, and hence shapes elections and history. Take note.