Banter Voices

Attention Media: Bloomberg DIDN’T Get The First Post-Election Interview With Obama

By Oliver Willis · December 04,2012

I was surprised today to see Bloomberg correspondent Julianna Goldman’s interview with President Obama trumpeted as the first post-election interview the President has given. It still says on Bloomberg’s website that it’s “his first interview since winning re-election.”

Why was I surprised? Because something like 5 hours before Bloomberg aired and streamed the interview, Obama had already called in for a live interview on comedian Steve Harvey’s nationally syndicated radio show.

You can hear the audio of Obama on Harvey’s program here.

I should note that I’m not equating a hard news outlet like Bloomberg with an entertainment program like Harvey’s. And Harvey has been quite transparent that he is a supporter of the president’s. Certainly the questions on Bloomberg were harder edged and more journalistically sound.

Still. I feel like this has been part of an ongoing ignorance of minority media outlets. I have yet to see the press devote as much attention to the role of minority media – particularly urban (black) radio and latino outlets on TV and radio – in motivating Obama’s base to get out the vote. I don’t have the hard data but I’m betting it was pretty instrumental to the President’s re-election (one of the first things he did on Harvey’s show was to thank him and his listeners for going out and voting for him.)

And Harvey’s interview wasn’t all fluff. He discussed details of the fiscal cliff debate with the President, the same topic that comprised the bulk of Bloomberg’s interview.

I checked out the numbers, and a New York Times report said that Bloomberg’s audience averages around 200,000. By comparison, Steve Harvey’s syndicator boasts 7 million listeners to his show. Even if that number is inflated, his show (along with Tom Joyner’s similar radio show) has considerable reach with a demographic that shows that they vote at the ballot box and at the box office (most recently to the tune of $91 million).

The media needs to stop pretending that the club hasn’t gotten bigger and more diverse and they should start acknowledging this fact of life.

Christopher Foxx

I feel like this has been part of an ongoing ignorance of minority media outlets.
…
(one of the first things he did on Harvey’s show was to thank him and his listeners for going out and voting for him.)

I suspect one of the first things Obama may have done on any program he visited where the audience had been supportive would be to thank the listeners for voting for him. Had he been interviewed by someone on WHIO in Dayton, Ohio, for example.

More to the point you’re making, tho, given the inflated self-image of most media outlets (as m2 noted) I doubt any outlet would acknowledged that they’d been neaten to the first interview, especially by a few hours. Far more likely that it was just that, the “we trumpet ourselves as being first and having exclusives” attitude than anything racial.
SaveFarris

Completely agree that Bloomberg should have added a qualifier.

I feel like this has been part of an ongoing ignorance of minority media outlets.

It’s not just “minority media”, it’s any non-traditional media outlet that exist outside their homogenous zone. Blogs are still largely held in disdain, as is conservative radio. Any sort of threat to their power to shape the national conversation is to be ignored and/or villified.
- M2
  
  Conservatives just suffered the effects of conservative radio, SF. How’d that vacuum work for you?
  
  Although, I agree with your larger point. When I hear a pundit or commentator scoff at a blog, I wonder what fucking year he/she thinks it is.
M2

I so agree, Oliver. Our media has such a inflated self-image, as if Carrot Top couldn’t land a show on CNN if he tried. They take Fox News seriously, for chrissakes.

I haven’t listened to Steve in 100 years, but used to dig him at work on WGCI here in Chicago back in the day. I don’t even know if that station still exists.

Banter Voices

Attention Media: Bloomberg DIDN’T Get The First Post-Election Interview With Obama

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