By Kelly McBride
Ethics Group Leader
Earlier this week, a Florida radio reporter named Alan McBride (no relation) ticked me off by accusing America’s journalists of succumbing to Obamamania. “The guy’s like a rock star,” the reporter told me. “How can journalists be objective?”
I lit into McBride, who caught me by cell phone just as the Unity Convention in Chicago was about to officially open. I asked him: What evidence do you have? Show me one example. I told him that I thought he was the one buying into political spin by accepting the idea that Obamamania has infiltrated the ranks of professional journalism. How dare he suggest that journalists would be less than professional in the face of this charismatic presidential candidate?
And now I am about to eat crow. Barack Obama is coming to the Unity Convention on Sunday morning and many of the journalists who will still be in Chicago are likely to provide him with an enthusiastic reception.
“It’s going to be euphoric,” predicted Glen Barbour, a former NBC newsman who now works for Orange TV, a local government information channel in Orlando, Fla.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s enthusiastic welcome goes over the line,” said George Rede, Sunday opinion page editor at The (Portland, Ore.) Oregonian.
“He’s going to say some cool stuff that’s going to get people very excited,” said Dalton Walker, a reporter for the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., who saw a lot of Obama during the run-up to the South Dakota primary. “I hope it doesn’t turn into a rally.”
Obama’s crowd of journalists at Unity may be a bit small, given the flight schedules of many of the journos who booked their trips home before the candidate announced his Sunday appearance. But if the more than a dozen interviews I did here on Thursday are any indication, Obama can expect a wholehearted welcome. By Monday, media critics will be tsk-tsking and pointing to the liberal bias of all journalists.
I won’t be one of them.
After my conversations with Unity participants, after hearing the stories of how hard it still is to make progress toward equal representation in our newsrooms, after listening to journalist after journalist describe why she got into the business (because she thought she could make a difference), I’m not going to be the one to tell them to sit down and mind their public image.
There is pretty big gap between those who would criticize the journalists who might cheer wildly for Obama and those who shrug their shoulders and declare “no big deal.” At first I thought the divide fell along racial lines, with white people in the first group and people of color in the latter. But it’s not that simple. Best I can figure, the real divide on this issue comes down to whether you’re at the Unity conference or not. Or maybe it’s whether you’re the kind of person who would get giddy or even choked up about all Unity stands for or not.
I couldn’t find anybody at Unity willing to wag a finger at those who would get excited for Obama. I found several people like Walker, from Sioux Falls, who promised to show personal restraint.
This isn’t like it was four years ago at the Unity Convention in D.C. when President George W. Bush received a lukewarm reception and Sen. John Kerry, then the presumed Democratic nominee, got a standing ovation. There was a direct comparison. Two candidates, same crowd, different reception. But Republican John McCain, a candidate with his own track record of charming reporters, is not scheduled to attend Unity 2008.
Many of the journalists I talked to at the convention this week described a dimension of Obama’s candidacy that’s worth considering.
“When’s the last time you saw a candidate draw 70,000 people,” like Obama did last May in Portland? asked Barbour, the former NBC reporter. “This is a historic moment.”
For journalists at Unity, it’s counterintuitive not to cheer that moment. Each of the four organizations that comprise the convention (NAJA, AAJA, NABJ, and NAHJ) were established in part as a refuge for journalists who felt unwelcome in predominantly white newsrooms of America.
“This is where we feel most comfortable to be ourselves. It’s part of the fabric of these organizations,” said Lori Price, staff writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Many of us would say, ‘This is my time to do this. Can I have this one hour?’ ”
Over and over, the journalists here at Unity told me the same thing: We’re human. How could we not be excited over the first black person to make it this far in the race for United States president?
So if you cheer and clap and offer up a standing ovation for Obama on Sunday morning, does that mean you can’t or won’t be fair? What about the perception that you can’t be fair?
“I can turn this off and on,” said Denetra Walker, a producer at WJBF-TV in Augusta, Ga. “When I’m at work, I’m there for my viewers. And I take that seriously.” She went on to describe all she does to ensure fairness and accuracy in her work.
The debate about the relationship between neutrality and fairness, between independence and credibility, between transparency and restraint, is long-standing in the context of political coverage. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen articulates one point of view in that debate here. My Poynter colleague, Bob Steele, represents another in the kicker to this USA Today article about Kerry’s Unity appearance in 2004.
I won’t deny that the public perception of thousands of professional journalists cheering for Obama is a problem. It is. But it can be answered, at least in part, with solid, hard-hitting coverage of both candidates in the presidential race.
So cheer away. It is a big deal. I trust that when you get back to work on Monday, you’ll be the professional servant of truth that you’ve always been, until you prove me wrong.
And if that radio reporter calls me back to say, “See, here’s the evidence that journalists are biased,” I’ll still bite his head off.
Because cheering for Obama at Unity is not evidence of Obamamania infecting the ranks of professional journalism. It’s evidence that the journalists at Unity are passionate about finding equal opportunities for people of every ethnicity and race. To the extent that Obama’s nomination represents that, I’m cheering, too.
CORRECTION: An incorrect first name (and link) for Alan McBride was published in the original version of this article.
