Bill Schneider’s journalistic malpractice
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| CNN’s Bill Schneider |
CNN’s Bill Schneider published a piece today on Barack Obama and the Jeremiah Wright story which is an outright act of malpractice and a reprehensible attempt to keep the controversial story in the headlines.
Schneider’s report today — "Poll of polls: Obama’s lead narrows after tough week"– is an abbreviated copy of an inaccurate, or misleading at best, report he published last week (based on extant polling results available).
In both reports Schneider claimed that Obama’s lead in the polls is narrowing and emphasized the negative impact the controversial story had on Obama’s campaign. Moreover, he failed to report, in either case, that while Obama had experienced a drop in polls much earlier last week, current polling indicated he had likely recovered from a progressive downward trend.
For today’s report, Schneider simply copied the first three paragraphs of last week’s report, changed the title, and provided a link to the older report for "the full story." And to emphasize the connection between Obama and his pastor, Schneider put the same picture he ran last week — portraying Obama and Wright together — in today’s piece. However Schneider obviously made a gallant effort to not appear too overstated since he put the picture on the opposite side of the page today.
After tapes of inflammatory statements made by Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor came out last weekend, it appears to have had some negative impact on the Illinois senator.
Nationally, Obama’s lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowed in a poll of polls — which included CBS News, USA Today and Gallup.
The polls, taken between March 14-18, show Obama with 49 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent.
Prior to Schneider publishing his report last week, results from Gallup’s daily poll showed Obama gaining in the two most recent polls and in a statistical tie with Clinton in Friday’s results. And in fact, the same poll on Saturday — well before Schneider’s piece today — showed Obama taking the lead.
Furthermore, in today’s report, he failed to mention that recent polling showed more than 69 percent of voters said "Obama did a good job addressing the issues of race relations."
But why should Schneider and his colleagues be concerned with journalistic integrity, when CNN, and its reporters’, well-established bias, inaccuracies, and misreporting can serve their agenda, and the agendas of those they serve? I admit CNN is not on the same notorious level as FOX News, but they are not exactly outpacing all other media organizations for the most prestigious journalism awards either.
The perpetuation of the Wright story is just one example of the media’s negligent, biased, and generally inept reporting. Glenn Greenwald has superbly covered the broader, more systemic issues on numerous occasions (most recently — here, here, here, and here). While Schneider’s reporting can arguably be interpreted as biased and an intentional attempt to discredit Barack Obama, the far more important issue is not just Schneider or CNN, but the slothful, pathetic, and biased reporting done by the media in general.
Update: These are images from CNN’s site. The first image is from Schneider’s piece published today. The second image is from the piece he published Friday. Both have date and time stamps.
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0
803/14/acd.01.html
READ FOR YOURSELF HE LIED HE SAID HE DIDNT HERE THEN HE DID>
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, first of all, Anderson, you know, I strongly condemn the statements that have been shown on the tape.
I have to confess that those are not statements that I ever heard when I was sitting in the pews at this church. This is a church that I have been a member of for 20 years. This is a well-established, typical, historically African-American church in the South Side of Chicago, with a wonderful set of ministries.
OBAMA: And, as I said, Anderson, if I had heard any of those statements, I probably would have walked up, and I probably would have told Reverend Wright that they were wrong.
But they were not statements that I heard when I was in church.
COOPER: So, no one in the church ever said to you, man, last week, you missed this sermon; Reverend Wright said this; or…
OBAMA: No.
COOPER: I mean, I think I read in your books that you listened to tapes of Reverend Wright when you were at Harvard Law School.
OBAMA: I did.
COOPER: So, you had no idea?
OBAMA: I understand.
Why is no one talking sbout the books it shows Obama lied from the start, how can we trust him to be differnt
In his book from my father chapter 14 Obama speaks of hearing sermons where Write spoke of Heroshima”hm sound familiar” Page 293 and also says he agrred with church black creed page page 284
So why would I trust him now, I did once but cant now.
http://www.tucc.org/black_value_system.html
Angel -
You missed the point, which is the inaccurate and misleading reporting, and thereby a very poor example of journalism. Schneider’s first report did not reflect current data and was patently false and misleading. He exacerbated the matter by republishing the same information three days later when even more data was available that stood in stark contrast to the thesis of his piece.
It’s bad enough for a journalist to copy a three-day-old article, change the title, and publish it three days later as if it is reflective of the current statistical trends. But when the original report contained dated information, it just gets worse with piece published.
The post has nothing to do with what Obama said or did not say. It has nothing to do with whether anyone agrees with what he said or not. It doesn’t even have anything to do with whether he lied or did not lie. It has everything to do with journalistic standards. It is abundantly clear Schneider was trying to manipulate readers with false information — not once, but twice.