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Last week—as Wright re-emerged into full public view to speak to PBS’ Bill Moyers, the NAACP and the National Press Club—the controversy he generated made more news than both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Clinton was a significant or dominant factor in 41% of the campaign stories and McCain registered in 14% of them. Meanwhile the relationship between Wright and his former parishioner Obama accounted for 42% of the week’s campaign coverage. Obama, who moved to decisively denounce Wright last week, was the significant or dominant newsmaker in 69% of the stories, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4.
These coverage numbers are strikingly similar to those from March 17-23 when Wright’s inflammatory statements about race and the U.S. triggered the first Obama damage control effort, including a major March 18 speech on race relations. That week, the Wright-Obama story line accounted for 37% of the campaign stories and Obama dominated coverage at 72%. Clinton (at 30%) and McCain (17%) were virtual afterthoughts.
As the primary voting has slowed, the media have focused on a number of Democratic campaign controversies—from Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers in Bosnia to Obama’s remarks about economically disadvantaged Americans being “bitter.” But none have had the staying power of the Wright flap. In the period from March 17 through May 4, the Wright-Obama story line made up 17%, or one out of six, of all the campaign stories studied. And last week saw the biggest spike yet in that coverage.
There were significant policy issues at play in last week’s Democratic campaign leading up to the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Clinton and Obama sparred over how to handle Iran and the proposed gas-tax holiday. The issue of gas prices accounted for the second-biggest category of campaign stories last week at 7%. And the next biggest chunk of campaign coverage, at 5%, was Indiana superdelegate and former Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrews switching his support from Clinton to Obama.
But even after combining the gas and the Andrews coverage, that is less than one-third of the attention paid last week to Wright.

Overall, the presidential campaign accounted for 38% of the newshole in print, online, radio and television, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4. Once again it was cable television, with its insatiable appetite for election news and speculation that far outstripped any other media sector in coverage. The 70% of the cable airtime devoted to the campaign last week almost equaled the combined campaign newshole numbers for network TV (27%), online (22%) and in newspapers (22%).
The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI.
As it ricocheted throughout the week, the Wright story struck numerous angles in the press coverage. What were Wright’s motives for potentially damaging the candidacy of a man he supports? How much political damage has been done? Was Obama’s denunciation sufficient? And then, as is almost always the case with a mega-story, the media’s role itself became an issue.
After airing footage of Wright’s aggressive defense of himself at the National Press Club on his April 28 show, CNN’s Anderson Cooper—who dubbed the controversy “Hurricane Jeremiah”—mused that “for a guy who supports Barack Obama, he couldn’t be doing any more damage to his candidate, could he?”

The next night, on the CBS newscast, the subject was Obama’s denunciation of Wright, a far stronger response than what Obama delivered in his March 18 speech on race. That speech was praised for its nuance. This response was covered in more purely political terms. “Barack Obama shifted today into major damage control, all but severing his ties to the pastor he once defended,” declared anchor Katie Couric, while correspondent Dean Reynolds noted that Wright’s words had put the Obama campaign in a “defensive crouch.”
On the May 1 edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” correspondent David Schaper canvassed voters in Hammond Indiana and found a variety of reactions. A retired roofer who supports Obama called Wright a “jerk” who may have damaged his candidate’s chances. An undecided retired steelworker said Wright’s words were making it harder for him to choose Obama. A former union president supporting Clinton declared that Wright’s views “had to sink in” on Obama during his 20 years in the church. But a retired steelworker, and Republican who is supporting Obama, asserted that a candidate should not be judged by his pastor.
The next day, on May 2, the Times sampled sentiment from the second battleground state—getting reaction from black churches in North Carolina. There were various crosscurrents ranging from sympathy for Wright to offense at his remarks to something in between.
“There’s some truth to the things Reverend Wright spoke about. And the Bible says the truth shall set you free,” one associate pastor told the paper. “But the Bible also says there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.”
And now, in the rest of the week’s news:
Aside from the campaign last week, news of the U.S. economy—driven last week by another interest rate cut and reports of very slow growth—was the second-biggest story, filling 10% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (In the first four months of the 2008, the troubled economy has been the No. 2 story, averaging 7% of the newshole per week) That was followed by events inside Iraq (3%) coverage of gas and oil prices (3%) and concerns about a global food shortage (2%).
Mark Jurkowitz, PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
|
|
Main Newsmaker | Significant Presence | Total Percent of Campaign Stories |
| Barack Obama (D) |
55.1% | 14.3% | 69.4% |
| Hillary Clinton(D) | 26.0 | 14.7 | 40.7 |
| John McCain (R) |
6.6 | 7.6 | 14.2 |
| Bill Clinton |
2.0 | 0.2 | 2.2 |
| Ron Paul (R) | 0.2 | 0 | 0.2 |
| John Edwards | 0 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Bill Richardson |
0.2 | 0 | 0.2 |
| Total Number of Campaign Stories = 408 | |||
Top Overall Stories of the Week
|
Rank |
Story |
Percent of Newshole |
|
1 |
2008 Campaign |
38% |
|
2 |
U.S. Economy |
10 |
|
3 |
Events in Iraq |
3 |
|
4 |
Gas/Oil Prices |
3 |
|
5 |
Food Shortage Worldwide |
2 |
|
6 |
Immigration |
2 |
|
7 |
Palfrey Suicide |
2 |
|
8 |
Virginia Tornadoes |
2 |
|
9 |
Energy Debate |
1 |
|
10 |
Supreme Court |
1 |
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.
Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
Popularity: 1% [?]
JEREMIAH WRIGHT APPLAUDED WILDLY BY NATIONAL PRESS CLUB — WON’T BACK DOWN ON 9/11 VIEWS
“Wright is tempered steel; 100 percent Marine. No surrender.”
The Salmon Valley Observer
5/5/08
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Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
April 30, 2008
Jeremiah Wright is 5 10” of tightly-packed explosives. He may be the best public speaker since Martin Luther King. He is bright, passionate, insightful and erudite. When he speaks; the sparks fly and the ground shakes.
Yesterday, (April 29th) when Wright took the podium at the National Press Club, he knew he’d be taken to task no matter what he said. He knew that every word he uttered would be twisted by the media to make him look like a hate-monger, or worse, a racist. But Wright faced his critics with dignity and delivered another barnburner. By the end of the speech, everyone in attendance was on their feet applauding wildly for the man the corporate media has chosen to destroy.
Reverend Wright:
“Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and girls to fight in the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the present two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. My goddaughter’s unit just arrived in Iraq this week, while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service, while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.” (Standing ovation)
Right on. Wright doesn’t mince his words. He knows what’s he wants to say and says it with gusto. Like Nietzsche opined, “If you want to be philosopher, bring a hammer”. Wright brought his hammer yesterday, only it turned out to be a sledgehammer.
Reverend Wright:
“Our congregation took a stand against apartheid when the government of our country was supporting the racist regime of the African government in South Africa.
Our congregation stood in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while our government, through Ollie North and the Iran-Contra scandal, was supporting the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries.
Our congregation sent 35 men and women through accredited seminaries to earn their master of divinity degrees, with an additional 40 currently being enrolled in seminary, while building two senior citizen housing complexes and running two child care programs for the poor, the unemployed, the low-income parents on the south side of Chicago for the past 30 years.
Our congregation feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families every year, while our government cuts food stamps and spends billions fighting in an unjust war in Iraq.” (second standing ovation)
The prophetic theology of the black church, which Wright preaches, is a theology of liberation and transformation. This isn’t the Jesus who provides fatter paychecks and vacation homes in the Barbados. This is Jesus the radical who came to deliver his people from bondage; to end segregation and Jim Crow, and to bring positive, meaningful and permanent change to “a social order that has gone sour.”
Rev. Wright:
“God does not want one people seeing themselves as superior to other people. God does not want the powerless masses, the poor, the widows, the marginalized, and those underserved by the powerful few to stay locked into sick systems which treat some in the society as being more equal than others in that same society.”
Right again. Wright’s message is uncontroversial. So who put the bull’s-eye on his back and decided to make him out to be a clownish caricature of a raging black radical spewing vitriol? It wasn’t a black man, that’s for sure. Was it someone who had a stake in the upcoming election and knew the best way to destroy Obama was to create a straw-man who would embody the very characteristics that make white people “uncomfortable”?
Who decided that their would be no Obama campaign; just Jeremiah Wright front-n-center 24-7 on every news channel and every front page? Who decided that Wright would have a larger media entourage than candidate Obama? Who decided that Iraq, the economy, and health care would all vanish from the national debate and voters would have to cast their ballots according to whether they liked Jeremiah Wright or not?
Obama’s supporters say that Obama wants to “transcend” race; that he wants to span the racial divide and move forward. Great, but how? Obama doesn’t pick what issues the media focuses on. Neither does Wright. Nor did Wright choose to make himself the center of attention; that decision was made at the highest level of the corporate establishment where the ruling body deploys journalists in a way that best promotes their own narrow interests. In this case, the media was tasked to sort through 15 years of backlogged sermons so they could extract a few choice tidbits that could be used to shock whites. The flap over Jeremiah Wright, who no one even heard before, is completely fabricated with the intention of derailing Obama’s candidacy. Everybody knows that.
The media is omniscient; they remain invisible behind the camera lens. But there’s no doubt about their objectives or that they’ve become a big player in the electoral process. The media sees itself as a “kingmaker”; their job is to shape public opinion using the tools at their disposal. This particular incident brings back the infamous “Dean scream”, which was replayed on commercial TV over 900 times during a 48 hour period, with a background narrative which suggested that Dean was mentally unstable. It worked, too. Dean’s approval ratings plummeted after the onslaught and the threat of an antiwar candidate appearing in the general election disappeared. Another triumph for the blue suits.
Jeremiah Wright is being used the same way. As Max Blumenthal said, Wright is being used “to mobilize resentment against Barack Obama….He is presented as the quintessential angry black man that the right wing loves to incite hatred against.”
This is the classic Swift-boating technique; choose a divisive issue (Race, abortion, immigration) and then find someone who can be used to embody the controversy. Wright is just the unlucky fellow who drew the short straw. If it wasn’t him, it would have been someone else. After all, the real target is Obama; he’s the real trophy. The prospect of a black man —however articulate and capable—occupying the Oval Office still sends shutters down the spines of America’s WASPish oligarchs. That’s “bonesman” territory, and they mean to keep it that way.
The media’s job is to make it look like Obama and Wright are joined at the hip; whatever comes out of Wright’s mouth gets pinned on Obama. It’s guilt by association and it appears to be working. Obama’s approval ratings are slipping and his supporters are frustrated. The public is wondering, “Why are black people so angry; and why is that Reverend Wright saying such mean things about America? Maybe I was wrong about that Obama fellow after all.”
But Wright is no fool. He’s aware of the media’s cynical agenda and he’s facing it head-on. He doesn’t vacillate or turn to putty like Pelosi and the other moral vagabonds in the Democratic congress. Wright is tempered steel; 100 percent Marine. No surrender. He knows that the gains in race relations have never come at the ballot box, but in the streets and in the churches and in the prisons. That where the where the real change comes; “transformational” change.
Rev. Wright:
“The prophetic theology of the black church, during the days of chattel slavery, was a theology of liberation. It was preached to set free those who were held in bondage spiritually, psychologically, and sometimes physically. And it was practiced to set the slaveholders free from the notion that they could define other human beings or confine a soul set free by the power of the gospel.”
God’s desire is for positive change; real change, not cosmetic change; radical change or a change that makes a permanent difference, transformation. God’s desire is for transformation, changed lives, changed minds, changed laws, changed social orders, and changed hearts in a changed world.”
Amen, Reverend. Give ‘em hell.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=1834
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Afterwards, Britt Hume and Mort Krondack of FOX NEWS, complained bitterly that Wright would not back down on his 9/11 as a hoax views.
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The Salmon Valley Observer has provided Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s office copies of The Rock Creek Free Press and Rev. Dr. David Ray Griffin’s DVD speech on Nine-Eleven and The American Empire. It appears he is using this information.
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“The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor
is the mind of the oppressed…” - Steve Biko
You are the first news site I’ve found that is actually including quotes other than the most inflammatory ones from Rev. Wright. Thank you for showing a more “fair and balanced” reporting on this man than te distorted character assassinations I’ve seen from all the mainstream media outlets. I am working to spread the word on this too.
Jonathan Tong
Kenmore, WA
The staying power of the story swirling about the Rev Wright and Bararck Obama is based on a contrived media feeding frenzy. No one would be concerned about what Wright said if the media hadn’t turned the whole situation into a circus. The media has garnered the powerand ahs become the message rather than the messenger. The media has blown this race thing way out of proportion and maybe it’s because so many white elitists fill key positions within the MSM.
The media reports that a black man “lied” about a certain situation whereas a white man or woman will have “misspoke.” Until the few corporate owners of the media stop demanding that a speciifc “spin” be put on the news, we will all continue to receive half truths spun as truth!
Written by veteran media critic and Emmy winner Rory O'Connor, Shock Jocks features unsparing profiles of the ten worst conservative radio talkers in America, including Michael Savage, Bill O' Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus and the rest.

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