Alleged MSM double-standards on Obama
 

[quote=ewmayer;215223]I'm most fascinated, though, by the continuing massive double-standard the mainstream media are showing toward the Obama administration versus its much-despised (and in many cases deservedly so) predecessor. If Dubya Bush had come out in highly public fashion - as Obama did - in favor of more offshore drilling - and a short while later there had been what is looking to be the largest spill in US history from just such an offshore rig, the media would have absolutely crucified him. Here, not only has there been no serious calling-out of Obama on his drilling stance[/quote]My analysis:

Obama is generally perceived to have supported offshore drilling as a sop to Republicans, not from his own enthusiasm for it. There really isn't any "his drilling stance" to "call out'. That's why the difference in treatment -- the drilling is still perceived as basically a Republican thing. (Google "drill baby drill".)

So, if there were to be outrage (from mainstream media) at Obama about offshore drilling, it would be on the basis of his having compromised with Republicans, not on the basis of the offshore drilling issue itself (the latter being ascribed to the GOP, rather than Obama).

However, Obama has already established a mainstream-media image of seeking Republican support for several prior measures. Thus, his behavior in regard to offshore drilling is not seen by the mainstream media as any significant departure from past behavior, or as betrayal, in that regard. No double standard is necessary.

OTOH -- you'd not expect the [I]conservative[/I] media to be outraged about offshore drilling, would you?

Without actually having done any survey, I predict that conservative commentators would have commented more ([I]relatively[/I]) favorably about Obama's original offshore order than about most others of his decisions. And -- talk about fortunate timing! Since conservatives had a couple of weeks not to lambast Obama for this before Deepwater Horizon, they certainly can't justify blasting him now for having allowed further drilling (not that they would anyway). So they have to aim their Obama-criticism at the idea of a supposed Katrina-like lack of response, while being careful not to seem to criticize Dubya in retrospect. Once again, reality seems to have a bit of a liberal bias. :-)

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215345]So, if there were to be outrage (from mainstream media) at Obama about offshore drilling, it would be on the basis of his having compromised with Republicans, not on the basis of the offshore drilling issue itself (the latter being ascribed to the GOP, rather than Obama).[/QUOTE]

I think that you missed his point. Rgardless of the [i]reasons[/i] for outrage, there just isn't [i]any[/i] outrage against Obama from the mainstream media.

The double-standard of the media also comes into play if one were to compare this disaster with Katrina. I have heard nothing about "Obama hasn't done enough to stop the spill" while no matter what Bush did after Katrina, it wasn't enough. I'm not deflecting blame from Bush, but IMO the Obama administration has not had to defend its reaction to this disaster.

[quote=rogue;215350]I think that you missed his point.[/quote]Ernst, did I miss your point?

[quote=rogue;215350]no matter what Bush did after Katrina, it wasn't enough.[/quote]Are you claiming that the Superdome refugees could not have been evacuated sooner than they were ([URL]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175611/[/URL]) ?

[quote]IMO the Obama administration has not had to defend its reaction to this disaster.[/quote]I presume you [I]don't[/I] mean that the Obama administration has [I]had no need[/I] to defend its reaction.

Do you mean that the Obama administration's reaction has not been attacked in the MSM?

[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01sat1.html[/URL]

[quote]. . .

Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.

. . .

The timetable is damning.

. . .

What we do know is that we now face a huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action.[/quote]That's not enough of an attack for you? As a New York Times editorial?

Don't reports of Republican attacks count?

[URL]http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/house-republicans-criticize-response-to-oil-spill/[/URL]

Or what else do you mean?

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215356]Are you claiming that the Superdome refugees could not have been evacuated sooner than they were ([URL]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9175611/[/URL]) ?[/QUOTE]

I did not say that Bush is blameless WRT post-Katrina. I am implying that even if Bush did everything he could, that the media would have blamed him for not doing enough.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215356]I presume you [I]don't[/I] mean that the Obama administration has [I]had no need[/I] to defend its reaction.
[/QUOTE]

Yes.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215356]Do you mean that the Obama administration's reaction has not been attacked in the MSM?

[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01sat1.html[/URL]

That's not enough of an attack for you? As a New York Times editorial?[/QUOTE]

Not everyone reads the NY Times and as far as I know this wasn't picked up by local media.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215356]
Don't reports of Republican attacks count?

[URL]http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/house-republicans-criticize-response-to-oil-spill/[/URL][/QUOTE]

I don't count Republican attacks, unless they show up in local media.

I'm just being very cynical over the whole issue. My perception (which isn't the same as anyone else's) is that after Katrina the media focus was on "how to help", "how to prevent", and "what Bush did wrong" while my perception after this is "how to fix", "how to clean up", "how to prevent" and "what BP did wrong".

I'm not judging the administration on its reaction as I can't state whether it is appropriate. I'm just saying that my perception is that if a Republican were in the White House that the media would be attacking the administration voraciously, even if they responded in exactly the same way that the Obama administration has. Is my assessment accurate?

[quote=rogue;215398]I did not say that Bush is blameless WRT post-Katrina. I am implying that even if Bush did everything he could, that the media would have blamed him for not doing enough.[/quote]Okay. We'll just disagree.

[quote]Not everyone reads the NY Times[/quote]But the NYT is about as mainstream as media gets.

[quote]I don't count Republican attacks, unless they show up in local media.[/quote]So, is it a correct interpretation to say that what you want by "outrage against Obama from the mainstream media" is editorial comments from the media organizations themselves, not simply electing to report criticisms voiced by others, such as citizens or other politicians?

[quote]I'm just being very cynical over the whole issue. My perception (which isn't the same as anyone else's) is that after Katrina the media focus was on "how to help", "how to prevent", and "what Bush did wrong" while my perception after this is "how to fix", "how to clean up", "how to prevent" and "what BP did wrong".[/quote]I think you're not taking proper account of the significant differences between the two events:

With Katrina, the "fault" was a force of nature, protection from which is one of the functions we assign to government. There was no corporation to blame. There was no corporation's fault that led to the damage.

The only aspects of human behavior that can be criticized in such a case are failures to: (a) take adequate measures (i.e., levees) to prevent damage from forces of nature, and (b) take adequate action after the event to help those affected by the event. Both are functions of government, not corporations.

The media outrage was mainly about (b). There was no corporation to blame, was there?

With Deepwater Horizon, the "fault" was that of human corporations, and only secondarily of government regulation or enforcement.

It's true that there was an unexpected burp of natural gas, which led to the explosion/fire and 11 deaths on the platform. But even that force of nature [I]was supposed to have been accounted-for by the oil companies[/I]. Errors by [I]people[/I] in the oil industry (and regulators) caused them to:

a) screw up in multiple ways concernng the blowout preventer's construction and documentation,

b) lie to themselves and regulators about their abilities to prevent and handle accidents,

c) fail to properly follow prescribed test procedures,

d) faultily cement the well piping (but this might not have been totally foreseeable),

e) lighten the hydraulic loading in the pipe, against proper procedures, at the wrong time, and

f) ignore well-known types of warnings about danger from natural gas coming into the piping, at a time when they could still have taken measures to prevent the gas bubble from erupting.

While we assign to government the function of regulating corporations, government is not what/who caused the people of the corporations to make the mistakes they did. Government is not the only human entity with responsibility for actions there, unlike Katrina, where government [I]is[/I] the only type of human entity with responsibility for actions.

It seems that, by your standards, for media outrage to have comparable for Katrina and Gulf oil spill, there would have to have been either:

1) media outrage against some corporations or other non-governmental entities in both cases, or

2) media outrage against no corporations or other human entities in both cases.

[I]How else could it have been that media outrage not be focused on government in the Katrina case, or not be focused on corporations in the Gulf oil spill case?[/I]

Can you explain how corporations could have been blamed in the Katrina case, or how a force of nature could have been blamed in the oil spill case?

[quote]I'm just saying that my perception is that if a Republican were in the White House that the media would be attacking the administration voraciously, even if they responded in exactly the same way that the Obama administration has. Is my assessment accurate?[/quote]No.

You haven't accounted for the significant differences between the two situations you compare.

[quote=ewmayer;215223]I'm most fascinated, though, by the continuing massive double-standard the mainstream media are showing toward the Obama administration versus its much-despised (and in many cases deservedly so) predecessor.[/quote]"massive double-standard", eh?

I'll ask you, as I asked rogue:

In view of the significant differences I listed above, is not a "double standard" actually appropriate because a single standard [I]cannot be properly applied to two such different events[/I]?

Can you explain how corporations could have been blamed in the Katrina case, or how a force of nature could have been blamed in the oil spill case? If you can't, will you acknowledge that your "double standard" comment was motivated by something other than a careful comparison between the two events -- perhaps an anti-Obama bias on your part?

If there was a more-than-proper eagerness on your part to believe criticisms of Obama, might that have interfered with your critical judgment in asserting the presence of a "massive double-standard"?

Might such interference with fair and impartial reasoning be epidemic among conservatives currently claiming that the same standard, and thus the same magnitude of criticism of the president, should be applied to both events? Is it possible that we have conservatives "playing politics" here instead of making a fair comparison -- and that they'll carry many of their easily-duped followers right along with them in bypassing fair and impartial reasoning ?

[quote=garo;215145]2. You cut corners, you cause a massive environmental disaster, you try to cover up the extent of the disaster and you try your best to stop the disaster from getting worse. Which is the odd one out?[/quote]None. They're all well-known aspects of human behavior. There may be some interference between the last two if the extent is covered up from the folks trying to keep it from getting worse.

[quote]4. I'm sure BP are doing their best to fix it now. But it is important to figure out why this happened and BP doesn't seem too keen to tell us why for obvious selfish reasons.[/quote]Agreed. It's understandable why they'd be reticent about revealing their mistakes. But, of course, the government's role here is to find and expose their mistakes.

[quote=cheesehead;215486]It's understandable why they'd be reticent about revealing their mistakes. But, of course, the government's role here is to find and expose their mistakes.[/quote]Same on the next level:

It's understandable why the government would be reluctant to admit [I]its[/I] mistakes.

It's the media's role to find and expose the government's mistakes.

As the latter is done more and more -- i.e., the government is revealed to have made more and more mistakes, in permitting, in inspection, in taking steps to get information, in getting to the truth in general -- the apparent "double standard" will converge toward a single standard. Those who are hoping for the Obama administration to be more-criticized by the MSM will get their wish -- because of evidence, not political wishing.

Cheesehead, I think [url=http://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=215489&postcount=14]garo's post above[/url] makes my point quite nicely ... where is the proactive lets-get-to-the-heart-of-the-problem (in which step 1 is getting good data on the size of the leak and not taking the leak-causer's word for it) "change we can believe in" from the Obama administration?

[QUOTE=cheesehead;215486]It's understandable why they'd be reticent about revealing their mistakes. But, of course, the government's role here is to find and expose their mistakes.[/QUOTE]

Exactly - so why is the government continuing to give BP carte blanche to tout whatever rate-of-spill numbers their PR flacks probably suggested to them? As garo's last snip says:

"BP has refused to let independent scientists inspect the site so that they could estimate the rate of the oil leak."

Obama could easily force BP to allow independent scientists (perhaps operating under the aegis of the EPA or FEMA) to come in - he appears to have deliberately chosen not to do so.

And this now is fitting a pattern ... it's exactly the same kind of tough-talk-backed-by-no-real-action Obama has used toward Wall Street. Where are the Justice Department inquiries and prosecutions there?

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Obama is in many ways just as feckless and full of shit as Dubya Bush was ... he's just a much-better-spoken bullshitter, is all.

[quote=ewmayer;215511]Cheesehead, I think garo's post above makes my point quite nicely[/quote]But you're not going to admit my point about a MSM double-standard?

[quote]Exactly - so why is the government continuing to give BP carte blanche to tout whatever rate-of-spill numbers their PR flacks probably suggested to them?[/quote]Are you trying to pretend that my refutation of your double-standard accusation was some sort of defense of the Obama administration?

What do you have to say now about your accusation of media double-standard, now that I've pointed out the differences between the two situations?

[quote]"BP has refused to let independent scientists inspect the site so that they could estimate the rate of the oil leak."[/quote]... which is consistent with my refutation of your accusation of media double-standard.

[quote]Obama could easily force BP to allow independent scientists (perhaps operating under the aegis of the EPA or FEMA) to come in - he appears to have deliberately chosen not to do so.[/quote]... and that's beginning to show up in the media, isn't it?

So your double-standard accusation is false, isn't it?

[quote]I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Obama is in many ways just as feckless and full of shit as Dubya Bush was ... he's just a much-better-spoken bullshitter, is all.[/quote]... and you're dodging the matter of your false accusation of media double-standard.