The Media Argument Is Just Plain Shallow

This past week, I came across an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye. It’s titled “A Tale of Two Disasters” and it‘s written by Paul H. Rubin, professor of economics at Emory University. From the ring of the title, I expected Rubin’s article to be an engaging “compare/contrast” essay on the current government’s controversial response to the BP oil spill disaster and the oft-ridiculed government response to the all-too recent devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, after reading the piece, I was disappointed to discover that the article is merely another whining session about the media’s perceived pro-Obama bias and its continued anti-Bush sentiment, the kind of journalistic moaning and bellyaching that pops up all-too frequently in the Journal’s op-ed section.

My initial reaction was to roll my eyes. Really, all the angles that this article could have taken and that’s the one Rubin chose? Rubin essentially claims in the editorial that the collective media victimized his government’s response because the just didn’t like him, but that Barack Obama gets a free pass because the media loves him. While I won’t deny that Obama certainly gets rosier press than what Bush got, I still have a couple of issues with Rubin’s claim:

• First, I’m fed up with using the media at large as a sort of “whipping boy”. It’s a cheap course of action that all kinds of pundits, picketers, and politicians love to use to justify their causes. It’s almost as if we actually expect the media to truly be fair and balanced! Of course the media jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon. That’s what sold the papers back in 2005. Of course the media has been obsessed with Obama. He’s the first black president, he’s fairly young for a political figure, and he has a stylish wife and two adorable elementary-aged daughters that rode in to the White House promising change. That’s what sold the papers back in 2008 and 2009. The media isn’t “anti-Bush” or “pro-Obama” because their all liberals; they’re that way because it sells papers and brings in viewers. (Much the same way that Mr. Rubin has focused his article on hot-topic talking point.)
• A second issue I have with the article is that it seems to try to absolve Mr. Bush of any mistakes. Look, it’s true that George Bush gets a lot of heat for mistakes that were made by other people. If anything, former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and former head of FEMA Michael Brown deserve most of the blame for their poor decision-making. But, while Bush certainly didn’t campaign for Nagin, he did appoint Michael Brown as head of FEMA. Did you know that Brown had had no prior experience with emergency management when he was appointed to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Yeah, he probably wasn’t the best choice.

“A Tale of Two Disasters” could have been an insightful examination of the mistake that were made 5 years ago and how, at the time, the United States should have learned from them. It also could have made the point that the country didn’t seem to learn anything, as evidenced by the poor management and oversight performed on the Deepwater Horizon rig by the Minerals Management Service. It could have shown how one disaster tarnished a presidency in the same way that a disaster five years later would threaten to tarnish another. It could have illustrated how necessary it is to appoint effective leadership and how vital it is to have and effective and prepared response ready before disasters occur. But instead, the piece opted for a childish act of foot-stomping about how the mean, old media ruined things for George W. Bush. If that’s not a missed opportunity, I don’t know what is.