On 9 September, President Obama is to address Congress on health care reform. Here is what I predict to follow:

• The main-stream media will declare the speech to be a sort of triumph.
• In all likelihood, the President's approval ratings will blip back up over the next few days, and the main-stream media will treat this increase as a trend.
• The approval ratings will begin again to decline, but the main-stream media will ignore the decline until his ratings are at or below the previous low.
• When the main-stream media admit to the lack of an upward trend, it will be to declare the approval ratings to be volatile, as if they are merely oscillating, rather than trending downwards.
• When it can no longer be denied that the President is generally unpopular, main-stream media analysis will largely be of a supposed inability of the American public to be happy with any President, as opposed to an honest examination of the differences between what had been hoped and expected (reasonably and unreasonably) of Mr Obama in particular, and what has actually come under his Administration.

Tags: Barack Obama, journalism, mainstream media, Obama

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