The Media in the Tank for Obama Reminds Me of Burma
Thursday, July 24 2008 @ 08:57 PM EDT

Contributed by: Samuel Maung Stone

Growing up under a totalitarian government that controlled the media for its own benefit, most Burmese yearned for journalism freedom that would keep the government, as well as the entire nation, transparent. During my college years, I remember reading a book, in Burmese, on the Watergate scandal, and learned how the journalists diligently brought the case to the surface. It was probably the first in human history and the greatest example of how the freedom of press could help up-build a nation and keep America straight on the course of freedom.

Now I am in America and have been enjoying for nearly two decades of the fresh air of reading, listening, and watching news uncensored by the government. However, in recent years, I have sensed that the American press has begun to lose that dignity that most outsiders admire and it has started to enslave itself to ideology and bias. A good example would be the media’s apparent cheerleading for the presidential candidate Barack Obama. According to Rasmussen Report on July 21, 2008, 49% of the voters believe the media is in the tank for Obama.

When we mention the well-known statement, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” we often think of those in the leadership positions. However, have we ever considered the press as a collective social class that also can become corrupt by its own rising power? We don’t have a dictator in America, but can the press become one? Can Obama become a puppet of the media dictatorship?

While America will not be like Burma, where the corrupt government pulls the strings of the media, it can be the other way around—a corrupt media pulling the strings of a puppet president. The question is, “How can the press lose its composure?” While media keeps the government accountable, who is going to keep the media accountable? If power can corrupt the media, how can we prevent it from happening?

I guess most people would answer that “media will keep media accountable,” meaning, for example, the slipping network news televisions are being kept accountable by the Fox News Channel, and vice versa. However, power can be addictive. Can the corrupt media join hands to overpower the other voices like a coup d’état? Am I thinking too Burmese? But, why not? We have recently seen three network news anchors, representing the same view and ideology, went with Obama on his Middle East fact finding tour. The other views and voices have apparently been mute!

At a breakfast meeting this week, I heard the majority of people at the table praising how presidential Obama looked on his tour. One said that he had never seen such a grandiose broadcasting of any senator or president on his or her foreign visit. To these guys, Obama had scored a knock out against John McCain, without realizing that it is the bias media that had raised their favorite avatar on the pole, and ignored the other presidential candidate.

Maybe we are seeing the reverse of the Watergate scandal—this time it’s the media that is abusing its freedom.

Near the end of 1988, the Burmese military regime took over the power from the civilians telling them that they didn’t know how to do democracy and that the regime would do it for them. Maybe the mainline media today is telling the U.S. citizens, “You don’t know how to elect the right president, we will elect one for you!”