Smart Bombs: Easier to blame the refs

Good news for those who think President Obama has received ridiculously positive media coverage. The honeymoon is over.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs reports that Obama has received generally negative coverage since his first 100 days in office. The study covered ABC, CBS and NBC, front pages of the New York Times, Time and Newsweek. A separate study of Fox News found that it was even more negative.

The same research group, based at George Mason University, found that Obama received much more favorable campaign coverage than John McCain, so it can’t be lazily branded as partisan.

The center’s studies of Obama and the past three presidents reveal a mixed bag. George H.W. Bush got the best honeymoon coverage (first 100 days), followed by Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The most favorable election coverage goes to Obama. The most positive coverage for an extended period goes to George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The latest study shows opposite trajectories for Obama and his predecessor. Obama’s evaluations during the first 100 days were 59 percent positive, but since have been negative, by 2 to 1. Bush’s honeymoon coverage was 43 percent positive, but for the two months following 9/11 it was two-thirds positive.

Such studies have their limits, because events such as the terrorist attacks and the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy shape coverage. The mistake many media critics make is to call for 50-50 coverage despite what’s happening. Think of a basketball game where one team is grabbing and holding. Is it fair to blow the whistle on both sides equally?

The research challenges perceptions, because it’s human nature to dwell on the “bad calls.” Plus, once you eliminate the media as the culprit, then you have to look inward. Who wants that?

There’s always C-SPAN. The CMPA study also confirmed the obvious: The media are obsessed with the presidency. Obama was featured in 1,205 stories, which is 11 times more than the runner-up, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Obama daughters tied for eighth (how’s that for balance). Every member of the top 10 was either an Obama or in his administration.

The White House has become another reality TV show, and journalism is the biggest loser.

TRANSPARENT. Remember the big uproar over federal budget earmarks? It was a key issue in last year’s presidential race and though U.S. Sen. John McCain lost, his colleagues in the House of Representatives vowed to reform the process. So they immediately formed a committee and installed U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers as chairwoman. The panel was supposed to produce a report in February, but it missed the deadline. Since then, it hasn’t met at all.

An online article by Politico has all the details. At the outset, the 10 panel members were asked not to make earmark requests until the process was fixed. Two of them complied. Eight others, including McMorris Rodgers, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., have submitted requests this year.

If you think earmarks are an important issue, then this must be troubling. But I’ve never understood the obsession with spending that annually amounts to less than 2 percent of the budget. I think it would’ve been foolish for McMorris Rodgers to unilaterally disarm. To take one example, let’s say she’s successful in securing the $1 million for the U.S. 195 Cheney-Spokane Road interchange. That’s money that would’ve gone to some other state.

That doesn’t mean the process isn’t ripe for reform, but there has been progress. For one thing, there is a lot more transparency.

Republicans have set up a handy Web site – Sunshine.gop.gov – that allows citizens to easily track earmarks, stimulus spending, federal bailout recipients, transportation requests and transparency legislation.

That’s a bridge to somewhere.