At below left we see another typical National Post photo of glory: a photo of The Great Obama with a baby. (I always love it when babies are being used as a cheap campaign billboard props by candidates and supporters. Yummy. Happy family day.)
But for the duration of time I’ve been tracking what I see as this pathological obsession of the National Post to promote, through almost daily glowing, fawning pictures and positive stories, their Hillary the Magnificent and The Great Obama, I’ve noticed several patterns emerging. I’ve mentioned them in some of these “Hillarack” blog entries.
Another pattern is the National Post’s propensity to attach a glowing, Obama or Hillary-boosting photo to an article or editorial …even when the article or editorial isn’t particularly favorable. It’s an odd thing. Ironic.
Ironic until you realize that it serves a useful purpose. The purpose, I think, is to appeal to the readers who don’t necessarily read the (negative, in this case) articles or editorials; it’s to appeal those people who aren’t particularly interested in politics but do flip through the pages and take a cursory look at what’s making the news. If all you see every day are glowing happy thumbs-up photos of Hillary The Magnificent or The Great Obama in gleaming, shiny, positive poses or surrounded by adoring fans, even if the article is not so glowing, well you need only look at newspaper advertising in general to know that the effect is powerful and effective. People who run newspapers know that better than most. The message literally imprints in your mind. Vote liberal!
It also serves to buffer the negative with a good big dose of graphical positive, which psychologically is also pretty powerful. It reminds readers that while this guy (reporter or columnist) may be “anti-Barack”, there sure are a lot of pro-Barack folks—why just look at this big ole photo a thousands of screaming fans!
Case in point is the photo below: it’s over an editorial written by a man (a flaming liberal, no less) who thinks Obama and all his “hope” and “change” rhetoric is, well, bunkum, which it of course is. But by injecting that photo over the negative op/ed, many readers will only associate Obama with “hope”. This is the desired effect. And for the rest, it’s at least a good buffer. For Obama and liberals in general, it certainly serves their marketing plans in a positive way.
Don’t think that the National Post is alone in doing this. All the mainstream media in Canada do this nearly every day. I just don’t have time to keep up with the abject bias in the mainstream media, and I happen to read the National Post.
PTBC reader Maureen caught an excellent example from last night, from the liberals’ far-left Toronto Star online. It’s an article headlined “McCain wins nomination”. At left is the accompanying photo.
This is par for the course.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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