Friday 19 June 2009

Is President Obama the Guardian’s new God?

The Guardian newspaper could at best be described as sceptical when it comes to religion and faith. It is not as vibrantly anti-faith as say the Independent because it no doubt sees a lot of sales value in a subject that more than 80 per cent of population profess to believe in.
There are though signs that the Guardian sceptics have created their own God in the shape of US President Barack Obama. There is never seemingly a critical word written of the new president. Whilst the Guardian is not unique in adopting this pose, most journalists seem to have suspended all critical faculties when it comes to the first black US president. However there is something very strange going on at the Guardian.
Take the recent fly incident with the President. A fly landed on the President, he swatted it and then pointed to where the dead corpse lay on the carpet for the camera. A little light story, maybe a paragraph on one of the foreign pages on a slow news day? Not for the Guardian, the whole of page three was given over to this momentous event. This followed the week before when in doing a two page spread of 12 points of new direction for the Labour Government the Guardian for some strange reason chose putting more troops into Afghanistan as the foreign policy option. Again supporting the new US president in his hour of need.
No need to get things out of proportion on the same day as the paper did page three on the fly story it ran an excellent piece on torture and UK complicity on its front page. But the question is has President Obama become the Guardian’s new God? Do all journalists have to salute the flag and sing hail to the chief every morning before starting work? These are vital questions that need answers – the very future of the liberal establishment could be at stake.

No comments:

Post a Comment