“BITTERGATE” BITES OBAMA
April 22nd, 2008 by Jon Clements 
As candidate for the biggest job in the world (that’s President of the United States, by the way), which commentators would keep you awake at night? The big journalist guns of the New York Times or Washington Post, perhaps? Or might it be a 61-year-old Pennsyvanian housewife and part-time (wait for it…) BLOGGER? Keeping journalists out of a recent Barack Obama campaign event in Pennsylvania clearly lulled the presidential contender into - well - saying what he really thought. Unfortunately for him, the 37 cataclysmic words of his speech which included references to small town people being “bitter” and somewhat attached to “guns” and “religion” were reported on an influential liberal blog by Mayhill Fowler - an Obama supporter!
Within a day, the post had 100,000 hits and the Clinton PR machine was in full swing to capitalise on Obama’s comments.
Despite having zillions to spend on the best comms strategists in the business, Obama has learned the hard way about the new reality: in the world of citizen journalism, everything is fair game
Tags: , blog, blogger, clinton, liberal, mayhill fowler, Media, new york times, obama, pennsylavnia, PR, washington post
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
I am usually cautious about declaring the web will have a massive impact, and the reason is that compared to many other media no single message can reach the same audience. It may reach a different audience, and can be targeted to who you want to talk to most; but lets say I have reservations on impact.
This highlights why in many ways. 100,000 hits is like wow but a small number in terms of having an impact on public opinion or an election in itself. It is the fact that those 100,000 told others, it was then picked up by the mainstream journalists, hit rolling news, the papers and so got out. Hence, arguably the web had a significant impact.
But would it have doen so if the journalists had thought it was not a story, probably not. The gatekeepers are still there and allow influence but still control the information the masses receive.
That may change though!!!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Darren
You’ve got a good point. If Obama’s comments hadn’t been so incendiary for the mindset of Middle America, they probably would’ve evaporated.
But I think the issue is how - previously - imposing a news blackout by excluding journalists would’ve meant exactly that. But the boundaries between career reporters and citizen reporters are blurring sufficiently to mean that any utterance can be seized upon at any time (with the exception of Mr and Mrs Obama’s pillow talk) and distributed without mediation.
This piece from the Observer suggests how the mainstream media are posing the questions: “How did this happen? Aren’t we in charge?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/20/internet.barackobama