Stop-Obama

Yesterday, television audiences were treated to a rare exercise of critical Obama coverage. Farrakhan was central.

Be skeptical, and don’t expect it to last. The media can’t reverse six months of bias in one week, and Obama’s interns only benefit from anything they can insinuate as “race-baiting;” ppowerful volunteers and interns who know your crime before you can think it.

For once, a voice in the media, albeit a lone voice, took a a stand against such preemptive policing.

In his Salon article, Alex Koppleman wonders, Is Obama playing the race card? referring readers to an intrepid article, written for the New Republic by Sean Wilenz, called Race Man. We don’t know Sean, but he could be a regular reader of Stop Obama judging by his thoughts. I recommend his perspective, It adds weight to our own.

Another must read is Giddeon Rachman’s devastating Obama and the Art of empty rhetoric. Rachman is editor at the exceptionally pro-Obama Financial Times, and along with Paul Krugman, the only mainstream journalist with a backbone. His article doesn’t touch race, but it’s powerful enough to warrant attention.

Last but not least this week’s surprise editorials, is an inane article by Gary Kamiya, who thinks It’s OK to vote for Obama because he’s black. Which brings me to the qustion of the media, Obama, and race.

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A few simple statistics about media coverage. They are raw, but the best we can do for now. I used two databases, Access World News and Lexis Nexi.
Access World News is “The world’s most comprehensive collection of full-text newspapers globally”, and it is also “a fully searchable Web-based resource [that] features the vast majority of the top U.S. newspapers by circulation, along with hundreds of hard-to-find local and regional titles, most of which are unavailable elsewhere.”

I key’d in a few simple search terms. here is what I got. My format is as follows, I first state the keywords entered, and then the number of articles featuring these words listed by year. Please note, the databases are the source for industrial standard in the media analysis industry, relied on by NielsenMediaResearch, and SIS.

Hillary Obama black
2008 (11,985)
2007 (8,057)
2006 (952)
2005 (133)

Hillary Obama first African-American
2008 (4,640)
2007 (2,777)
2006 (370)
2005 (50)

Obama first black
2008 (10,060)
2007 (8,693)
2006 (1,966)

Obama first African-American

2008 (4,062)
2007 (3,477)
2006 (812)
2005 (272)

The numbers from Lexis Nexis, a database larger than Access World, and equally relied upon by media analysts, goes beyond newspapers and drills down into MSNBC, FOXNEWS, and CNN television transcripts. I tried the liberal New York Times.

For a search of 1000 random articles in the New York times, containing the name Barack Obama,

683 contain the words first black, (60 %)
324 the word african american (33%)
505 the root africa* (50 %)

On average, 15 to 40 % of all New York Times articles mention Obama’s race. For the past six months, of 488 articles, 180 mention black (37%, nearly forty percent!),
80 the root africa* (16 %) which in 65 cases is part of the hyphenated african-american (13 %)

For the month of January, out of 84 articles,
25 mentioned black (30 %, or every third)
13 the root africa* (15 %)

The conclusion: if Obama is a post-racial candidate, then it is a result of media framing, not media coverage. On average for the last four years, one in every four articles about Obama doesn’t fail to mention his ethnicity. Imagine someone referring to your ethnicity, every fourth or fifth time they talk about you to a third party.

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Let’s take a look at something a bit hard hitting. At the keywords Hillary, and racism. In Access World, I typed

Hillary Racist
2008 (931)
2007 (1,271)
2006 (495)
2005 (202)
2004 (186)

Now I didn’t expect any results. So these numbers took my breath away. As keywords , Hillary and racism are crude. I am not aware of any direct reference to Hillary and racism in the media. Such terms were eschewed, and racism was always obliquely suggested, never directly stated with terms like “offensive” or “insensitive” and a thousand others whose connotations were hard to mistake. Hillary and racisms, are simply approximations of where the media were going with the South Carolina story and Bill Clinton’s remarks.

Here is a series of monthly data, from Lexis-Nexis, for Hillary and the root Racis*

Nov 2007 (325)
Dec 2007 (775)
Jan 2008 (999)
Feb 2008 (994)

The data indicate that Hillary and racism peak with the South Carolina primary. The series also reveals the unambiguous direction the media took on Hillary at the time. According to Wilentz, the responsibility for this direction, lies with the Obama campaign.

***

I think the case is closed. Race is an issue in this election. From what my colleagues at this blog have written, it is an issue raised and exploited almost exclusively by the Obama campaign. I’d say his staff can’t get enough of it. They relish opportunities to portray their opponents as politically incorrect, and consistently use it to stiffle criticism of Obama’s biography, record, campaign, and his manufactured image as American Savior.

The media are Obama’s allies, and without exaggerating, the media are race-baiters. Any story with a tinge of race, offense, insult, or slight political-incorrectness, is a boon. They pump turbans, Husseins, maddrassas, down viewers throats, as if these were substantive issue. That Obama, as Jamal noted towards the end of his uncompromising post, offers nothing to the people whose story he calls his own (i.e. his brothas?), is never questioned by this race-obsessed media.

For closure, here is a baffling statistic. For every mention of Obama in the last four years, the word white comes up:

2008 (19,606)
2007 (22,550)
2006 (4,426)
2005 (1,821)

Now the most common combination for this term in reference to Obama is white voters. I am miffed, as to why it would appear in 40% of all newspaper coverage of Obama. Any suggestions, ideas?

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