The press can't hide from its role in the Obama school speech “controversy”

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

Tim Rutten has a good piece in the Los Angeles Times about “the bizarre controversy” surrounding Obama's planned speech to U.S. school children and the unhinged right-wing response about how the President of the United States was going to “indoctrinate” students by urging them to achieve excellence.

Rutten is dead-on when he notes the inherent danger behind the ugliness. Unfortunately, Rutten lets the serious, mainstream press off the hook. (Fox News clearly doesn't fall into that category.) The fact is you can't really bemoan how the this 'controversy' has become a big deal without noting it's the press that's turned it into one.

This loony tunes conspiracy theory has only gained traction because the corporate press won't stop writing and talking about it. Because reporters and pundits have legitimized it. They've rewarded the nuts who concocted the phony story in the first place.

And yes, I'm talking about corporate press outlets like the Los Angeles Times, which propped up the school nonsense as big news in its Friday edition with this headline:

Planned school speech by Obama hits resistance; The address will focus on student success, the White House says. But one critic denounces a 'socialist ideology.'

Got that? A conservative Republican (i.e. “one critic”) makes a crackpot claim about Obama, which the GOP Noise Machine then mindless echoes, and at the LA Times that's news.

Please.

As Matt Gertz wrote last week about the right-wing nuts who are keeping their kids home from school because they don't want them exposed to the POTUS [emphasis added]:

There is something wrong with these people. As long as Beltway reporters like [Mark] Halperin keep treating their complaints as valid, they will maintain a hold on our discourse that prevents serious discussion of actual issues. And no, reporting that “critics” say that Obama is planning to indoctrinate students but the Obama administration denies it does not suffice. Resorting to “he said/she said” journalism when one side's claims are blatantly ridiculous is just pathetic.