Whether racial and gender identification produces a gauzier, more favorable portrayal of Obama is perhaps too early to judge. After all, no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murphy. And with her carefully crafted focus on her children, affordable fashion and such reduced-fat apple pie issues as healthy eating, Obama has done little to warrant sharp criticism.
And yet, Kurtz still pens an entire piece for the Washington Post asking:
Well, yes, Obama is a black woman from the South Side of Chicago. It would be impossible for anyone to cover her without giving prominence to that fact. But are the beat reporters inadvertently invested in her success?
Look, the issue of reporters empathizing with their subjects is one that goes far beyond race--politicians who have failed to earn the empathy of their press corps (see Gore, Al) have done far worse than politicians who have (see Bush, George W.) so this shouldn't be a racial issue. It's entirely possible that a white male reporter would run into the same issue with Michelle Obama. More importantly, you would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom. I'm wondering when the Post Ombudsman will be addressing the issue of whether Howard Kurtz empathizes too greatly with the white reporters he covers because he is a white reporter.
Meanwhile, it seems like Kurtz attentions would be better focused on the 25 gs the WaPo is charging for access to Obama adminstration officials, and what kind of "investment" that represents.
UPDATE: The "Salons" have been cancelled. -- A. Serwer
