Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

by Matt Taibbi

By the time Barack Obama ran for president, the transformation was complete. Obama, most everyone in the national press corps agreed, was our generation’s long-awaited Kennedy (German reporter Christoph von Marschall even wrote a book called Der schwarze Kennedy about Obama). Those who followed his campaign wanted to be passengers on his ride, “part of history.” I remember stepping on Obama’s campaign plane for the first time and seeing the press section plastered in photos. It looked like a high school yearbook office at the end of a semester. Apparently, there was a tradition of reporters taking pictures of themselves covering Obama. They often posed with the candidate, and pasted the pics on the plane walls. I liked Obama well enough at the time, but thought: “Man, this is not a good look.” A reporter who allows himself or herself to be photographed arm in arm with a politician is asking for trouble. If I did it, I knew, police would find a hundred bodies buried under the candidate’s lawn the next day.