The Hubris of the Political Press: On Obama, George & Anna Nicole

I'm appalled by the hubris of the press. And by press, I mean both the "old" and "new" media: print reporters and columnists, bloggers and online journalists alike.

I've covered politics for About.com, which is a New York Times Co., for only a couple years now, but what I've learned about national political reporting has softened my perspective toward the media hardships of political leadership.

Silly me. I always thought that, like they teach in college journalism courses, the press works for the great American public, as do political leaders.

If the recent Scooter Libby case has taught journalists anything, it's that reporters can be and are deftly, cleverly used to prop up political agendas. And it's routine for partisan pundits, from conservative Rush Limbaugh to liberal Al Franken, to grant airtime and print space only to leaders who support their iron-clad worldviews.

Of course, conservatives have complained for decades that the so-called liberal media reports from a radically-biased perspective. I have my own beef with pundits who cite the Moonie-owned, ultra-conservative Washington Times newspaper (and similar) as a credible, objective news source, and the Wall Street Journal, in recent years, has brashly trumpeted its conservative slant.

None of that is especially new, though.

What's new, and most galling of all, are members of the political press who punish leaders who don't stroke the reporter's ego; who don't provide 24/7 access on demand; who don't respond to every intrusive personal query; who don't always present a happy smile, a pat answer and warm approval of every crass word written about them.

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