Barack Obama may have spent a week on vacation in Hawaii, but
the CBS Evening News demonstrated to viewers that they
could find the “evergreen” stories that would keep up a
relentlessly churning campaign on Obama’s behalf, even as he
rested and relaxed in the tropical sunshine:
On
Monday, anchor Katie Couric performed a puffy interview with
Valerie Jarrett, “the other side of Barack Obama’s brain,” a
woman who “just may be the most powerful woman in Chicago
besides Oprah.” Couric described as “tongue in cheek” Obama’s
response ad slamming the John McCain’s celebrity, but on July 31
Couric slammed McCain’s original celebrity ad as “infamous.”
On Tuesday, CBS analyst Jeff Greenfield brought up Clinton adviser
Mark Penn’s primary advice that Obama could be attacked as “not
fundamentally American” in his values. As video played of parts of two
McCain ads, including the one with Paris Hilton, Greenfield asserted:
“To look now at some of John McCain’s TV and Web ads, it is almost as if
his campaign is following Penn’s outsider strategy to the letter.”
On
Wednesday, CBS reporter Dean Reynolds bashed McCain’s ads again,
recalling how McCain promised “to conduct a respectful campaign,”but
citing McCain’s celebrity ad, charged “now it frequently seems respect
takes a backseat to ridicule.” A professor declared: “McCain
advertisements are much more likely to be contrast or negative and the
Obama advertisements are much more likely to be positive.”
On Thursday, CBS compared the Web sites of the two candidates and
declared Obama’s far superior. Turning to “Web design expert Doug
Jaeger,” CBS determined Obama’s Web site was “clean” while McCain’s was
“cluttered,” giving users “a feeling of chaos.” Reporter Daniel Sieberg
considered it relevant that on social sites like Facebook and MySpace,
“Obama is ‘friended’ almost seven times more than McCain.”
CBS left out that when Jaeger assessed the campaign Web sites in May for
Vanity Fair magazine, he had praised McCain’s and did not find clutter
and chaos: “McCain’s site is smart — he allows for three editions:
Supporter, Undecided, Unregistered Voter. This is a great way to tailor
the entire site to steer voters, or get them to register.”
For more, see the August
12,
13,
14 and
15 CyberAlerts.
