Oh Brother. Conservative Critic Claims Media “Walked Right Past” Rev. Wright Story In 2008

Conservative revisionism marches on, and the facts just keep getting trampled.

The most recent rewriting of the past centers around the never-ending complaint about how the allegedly liberal media has gone so soft on Obama, and went easy on the Democrat when he was running for president.

Just last month Media Matters highlighted how absurd and lazy the talking point is. But it continues to be a favorite.

It's part of this firmly held conservative fantasy that the only reason Obama won an electoral landslide in 2008 was due to voters not really knowing much about the candidates -- after more than 18 months of national campaign -- since the liberal media refused to tell the truth and ask tough questions of Obama. (Why? Because he's black.)

Writing in Canada's National Post over the weekend, and cheered on by scores of right-wing American bloggers, Rex Murphy condemns the U.S. press corps for its Obama reporting:

American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama's rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn't reclaimed them since.

That's quite an indictment. Murphy's proof to back up his sweeping attack? Believe it or not, he claims the press “walked right past” the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal during the spring of 2008. That's right, the Obama-friendly press paid little attention to the damaging Wright scandal three years ago. And that except for a “brief stormlet,” the story went unnoticed by the press.

Huh?

For the record, let's take a look at how the press “walked right past” the Wright story during the months of March and April 2008. Searching Nexis for television segments as well as newspaper columns and news article that mentioned Jeremiah Wright at least four times, here are were the number of matches during those two months:

-CNN: 228

-Fox News: 213

-NPR: 103

-ABC: 61

-MSNBC: 70

-NBC: 36

-CBS: 34

-Chicago Sun Times: 104

-Washington Post: 64

-New York Times: 52

-Boston Globe: 44

-Washington Times: 66

How ceaseless was the media's Wright obsession? So relentless that at the time just five percent (!) of Americans thought the story received “too little” media attention, according to a CBS/New York Times poll.

But now, as conservatives manically work to rewrite the past, we're told the liberal, Obama-loving media “walked right past” the Rev. Wright scandal.