Keeping up with the Times: Mon, Sept. 21, 2009

I've been told time and time again that all great writers were also avid readers. As a journalist-to-be, what would be a better sampling of great, credible journalism than The New York Times with "All the News That's Fit to Print"?

Today in The New York Times, a unique slideshow of photographs plastered on the front page caught my eye. Obama defended his plans for health care reform in not 1, not 2, 3 or 4, but 5 back-to-back televised broadcast interviews on Sunday. The media broadcasters included ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Univision, the Spanish-language broadcaster. The article called it a "remarkable- and remarkably overt- display of media management." No other president has been a guest on so many Sunday talk shows at once. Up until this point, it seems that Obama has been gun-shy about defending and standing beside his health care reform ideas in the strong face of opposition by town hall protests and even questioning liberal Democrats.

Obama is a deft, articulate speaker with all the inspirational charm of a politician; this cannot be denied. Yet on the flip side, he has the coy elusiveness of a politician on shaky ground. He cunningly eludes the tougher questions on potential impacts on taxpayers' wallets with vague answers. It makes me wonder when will the whole picture on Obama's health care reform finally come out?

Another interesting point worth mentioning is Obama's decline of an interview with Fox. "Fox did not broadcast Obama's health care speech to Congress on Sept. 9, so Mr. Obama did not speak to 'Fox News Sunday'" explains the writer, Alessandra Stanley. Obama's administration is the first presidency that I have been really paying attention to with close, comprehensive detail. I was born in the middle of President Sr. Bush's presidency followed by the Clinton term and finally George W. Bush's two consecutive terms. This past presidential election was my first time voting and like any responsible citizen of this country, I like to keep tabs on the people we have elected for offices of high power. Considering I don't know much about politics and even less about how politicians align their preferred biases with media broadcasters, my opinion may sound naive, but this rivalry payback seems ridiculously juvenile to me. That the Obama administration declines discussions with Fox assumes that they align themselves with media broadcasters that coincide with their partisan biases.

Called by some the most biased name in the media industry, Fox is openly conservative. Is Fox too biased to be credible? Is Obama honestly reaching out to all Americans and differing views by declining an interview with Fox? Who can tell?