Back Channels: Media's swoon over Obama

Campaign '08 has hit the big screen.

In a sense, it's a love story. The heartthrob is the Kennedyesque young senator from Illinois, with the supporting cast composed of the many media suitors who came a-courtin'.

There's Chris and his thrilled leg. Oh-so-serious Anderson and his plaint about distractions vs. real issues. The TV reporter who declares a Rev. Jeremiah Wright-free zone so the candidate will feel more comfortable. The swooning ladies of The View. And the superest, specialist guest star of them all: Oprah!

The documentary - Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted - is part tragedy and part romantic comedy, as the above-named suitors and others trip all over themselves making excuses for their guy.

Filmmaker and Philly-area native John Ziegler isn't the only one who noticed the media's infatuation with Barack Obama. A Rasmussen poll released on Election Day showed that 51 percent of voters thought reporters tried to help Obama win. But Ziegler was on to the issue long before Nov. 4. The filmmaker's "crystallizing moment" was the coverage of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his racially inflammatory sermons.

"That showed how ridiculously in the tank the media were going to be for Barack Obama," Ziegler says. "It was just a flat-out joke."

Media Malpractice is available at www.howobamagotelected.com but has also been shown in a few cities. Ziegler would be thrilled to hold a hometown screening, so if your organization wants to sponsor such an event, contact him via the Web site.

The film starts pre-love affair, when the media narrative has Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Obama didn't have a shot - but he clearly had a future - so there was no reason to seriously vet or potentially harm him.

Then came Obama's win in Iowa, and it was Hillary Who? No big-state win or 40-point victory by Clinton could dim the Obama aura. The underdog had become the front-runner, but he was still treated with kid gloves.

"There was a subconscious decision to treat him differently, lowering the bar for him, because he's black," Ziegler says. "Rev. Wright is the best example. If a white candidate had that kind of a connection to a raving lunatic KKK member - I mean, please, it's so obvious, it's hilarious."

If Wright's statements raised doubts in the media fan club, Obama's subsequent Philadelphia speech on race calmed the waters. "The Messiah had proven he was still worthy of their worship," Ziegler says in the movie.

While Wright was dismissed as a distraction in the media - "that was the Obama camp's favorite phrase, 'a distraction,' from the real issue of getting me elected," Ziegler says - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set off a full-fledged panic attack. She threatened the Obama story line, Ziegler says, and after the initial announcement, the media "crammed more vetting of her in a few days than they had during Obama's entire campaign."

In an interview with Ziegler, Palin talks about the race, reacts to some of the more outrageous media clips, and helps drive home the film's main point: The media let us down in nearly every respect.

"Fairness in the media is for the electorate's sake, so they understand the choices that they have in front of them in the voting booth," Palin says in the film.

For far too many, the choices came down to what "issues" broke through, Ziegler shows in the film and in a Zogby poll he commissioned. If it was a negative about Palin, it broke through. On Obama? Not so much.

Those results, Ziegler says, are a byproduct not just of coverage in 2008, but also the fragmentation of the media in the last 15 years.

"Because of fragmentation, it's no longer what gets reported that matters," Ziegler says. "Everything gets reported somewhere. What matters is what gets repeated."

What was repeated and remembered by Obama voters? Palin's wardrobe. Her pregnant teenage daughter. Tina Fey's classic line, "I can see Russia from my house."

What didn't sink in? Obama's background in Chicago politics, his association with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. (The film shows more airtime spent on Palin's use of the word terrorist to describe Ayers than actually used reporting on the former Weather Underground member.)

Ziegler insists he's not passing judgment on Obama but on what he calls "dangerous and unprecedented" campaign coverage that he hopes won't happen again.

The film has received some coverage on the networks. In other words, it's been reported. But will it get enough repeats to help it break through and be successful? If it doesn't, that just might prove Ziegler's point - and his worst fears about the death of journalism.

at 215-854-5305 or kf@phillynews.com.