by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants.<\/p>\n The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama administration. In return for empowering a fellow liberal, the press gave up its traditional adversarial relationship with the president.<\/p>\n But after five years of basking in a shared progressive agenda, the tab for such ecstasy has come due, and now the media is lamenting that it has lost its soul.<\/p>\n At first, the loss of independence seemed like a minor sacrifice. In 2008, MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews sounded almost titillated by an Obama speech, exclaiming, \u201cMy, I felt this thrill going up my leg.\u201d Earlier,\u00a0New York Times<\/em>columnist David Brooks had fixated on Obama\u2019s leg rather than his own: \u201cI was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I\u2019m thinking, a) he\u2019s going to be president, and b) he\u2019ll be a very good president.\u201d<\/p>\n For worshiper and former\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0editor Evan Thomas, Obama was divine: \u201cObama\u2019s standing above the country, above the world, he\u2019s sort of God.\u201d TV pundit and presidential historian Michael Beschloss ranked the newly elected Barack Obama as \u201cthe smartest guy ever to become president.\u201d<\/p>\n For a press that had exposed Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Monica Lewinsky affair, and had torn apart George W. Bush over everything from the Iraq War to Hurricane Katrina, this hero worship seemed obsessive. The late liberal reporter Michael Hastings summed up a typical private session between President Obama and the press during the 2012 campaign: \u201cEveryone, myself included, swooned. Swooned! Head over heels. One or two might have even lost their minds. . . . We were all, on some level, deeply obsessed with Obama, crushing hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes the media and Obama were one big happy family \u2014 literally. The siblings of the presidents of ABC News and CBS News are both higher-ups in the Obama administration. The White House press secretary\u2019s wife is a correspondent for ABC\u2019s\u00a0Good Morning America<\/em>.<\/p>\n When Obama\u2019s chief political aide, David Axelrod, went to work for MSNBC, Obama jokingly called it \u201ca nice change of pace, because MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod.\u201d Nor was Obama shy about rubbing in his subjects\u2019 hero worship: \u201cMy job is to be president; your job is to keep me humble. Frankly, I think I\u2019m doing my job better.\u201d In Africa recently, Obama advised his traveling press corps to \u201cbehave,\u201d then compared them unfavorably with the more polite and compliant media of an increasingly authoritarian South Africa.<\/p>\n Four hundred reporters even formed their own off-the-record shared email chat group, JournoList, to strategize attacks against Obama\u2019s political opponents. AttackWatch.com (paid for by Obama for America) read like some sort of secret-police operation, asking readers to report any criticism of Obama as it compiled \u201cAttack Files\u201d in blaring black and red headers.<\/p>\n When President Obama kept open Guantanamo Bay or expanded the Bush war on terror, he was described as \u201canguished\u201d and \u201ctorn\u201d as he broke his earlier promises. Bad news like unemployment spikes or flat GDP growth was customarily editorialized with adverbs like \u201cunexpectedly\u201d \u2014 as if Obama\u2019s setbacks surely were aberrant and would quickly subside. In one of the 2012 presidential debates, the moderator, CNN\u2019s Candy Crowley, was so exasperated that Obama seemed to need help that she jumped in to challenge Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n Obama rightly assumed that when the Benghazi scandal surfaced during the 2012 campaign, the press would largely ignore it. Likewise, he knew that the politicization of the IRS would not warrant headline news. Ditto Fast and Furious and the NSA mess.<\/p>\n But then a Faustian thing happened. This year it was also revealed that the Obama administration had monitored the communications of Associated Press reporters on the suspicion that they were publishing leaks. For the first time, outrage arose: Liberal presidents were not, in Nixonian fashion, supposed to go after liberal reporters.<\/p>\n The Obama administration did not object to AP reporters\u2019 leaking classified information per se. Indeed, it had leaked the most intimate details of the cyber war against Iran, the drone protocols, and the bin Laden raid to pet reporters like theNew York Times<\/em>\u2019s David Sanger and the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s David Ignatius. The election-year \u201cexclusive\u201d revelations of both usually portrayed Obama as an underappreciated, muscular commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n The crime instead was that AP was freelancing and might publish leaks that were not always flattering. Since long ago the media had made a pact, it was natural that the Obama administration assumed it had a right to monitor what it had bought.<\/p>\n In one version of the tale, Dr. Faustus at least got 24 years of freebies before being hauled off to Hell. Our poor media did not even get five years of adulation before Obama called in their souls.<\/p>\n NRO\u00a0contributor<\/em>\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>. His\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is just out from\u00a0<\/em>Bloomsbury<\/em>\u00a0Books.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145],"tags":[12,1044,88],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1BC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1893,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/conservative-felonies-liberal-misdemeanors\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":0},"title":"Conservative Felonies, Liberal Misdemeanors","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why in matters of stupid behavior do liberals and Democrats often get second and third chances from the media and general public not accorded to their conservative and Republican counterparts? We're seeing it now in the national reaction to Senate Majority Leader Harry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5950,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-second-term-embarrassments-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Second-Term Embarrassments","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Hope and change\" is looking like the 1973 Nixon White House. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5954,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nixon-is-a-fair-comparison\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":2},"title":"Nixon Is a Fair Comparison","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There have been lots of comparisons, most hotly dismissed by the president\u2019s defenders, between Nixon and Obama, but in some ways the latest scandals have the potential to match or even trump those of 1973\u20134. Nixon\u2019s sins were primarily domestic; no one died. Benghazi\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9475,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-next-president-unbound\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":3},"title":"The Next President Unbound","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There is reason to worry about both candidates abusing power as president, because Obama and the press normalized executive overreach. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Donald Trump\u2019s supporters see a potential Hillary Clinton victory in November as the end of any conservative chance to restore small government,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9688,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trump-nail-in-the-media-coffin\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":4},"title":"The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin","author":"Megan Ring","date":"January 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ Town Hall | President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field many questions from New York\/Washington journalists.What we know as \"the media\" never imagined a Trump victory. It has become unhinged at the reality\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.townhall.com\/townhall\/reu\/ha\/2016\/356\/8ea9ea18-4f78-4127-92a8-b6fa0321f3dc.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2709,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ministers-of-truth\/","url_meta":{"origin":6176,"position":5},"title":"Ministers of Truth","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner True, the far Left, in the manner of the far Right's hatred of Bush's Iraq War and his support for Israel, has begun to murmur disappointment with Obama. But it is quite astounding that the mainstream liberal media \u2014 NY Times, Washington Post, NPR,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2009"","block_context":{"text":"May 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/may-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6178,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6176\/revisions\/6178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}