ABC recently announced that it will be doing a primetime special anchored from inside the White House. The media has always had a favored tilt toward President Obama, but the increasing intermingling between the Obama administration and the media is alarming many conservatives. ABC will be streaming a Health Care special from the Blue Room of the White House on June 24th. Republicans have cried foul on the situation, citing biased coverage of the Health Care issue. Should there be a line drawn between media coverage and politicians?

Clearly the move by the White House to allow ABC to perform a newscast from within the White House is political. The President sends another message to the people that he continues to try to run a transparent administration. The close ties with the media are kept, if not strengthened. Additionally, Obama gets another opportunity to spotlight his health care agenda. It is only natural that the newscast would have a favored spin to the Presidents views. After all, why would the administration allow such a spectacle to happen if it were to criticize the President and his agenda?

Republicans fear that conservative opposing views will not appear on the primetime show to help balance the issue; a legitimate fear. The President has a clear advantage over the Republicans in the sense that he is widely accepted by the media, and because of that has many outlets to communicate
his agenda to the American people. Unless the Republicans can find a way to either, undermine the Presidents media outlet, or increase their own media outlets, they can expect an uphill battle on many issues besides Health Care. Republicans need to find as many outlets as possible to counter claims of the
Obama administration. Though conservative blogs and news organizations are safe havens to the Republicans, they do not have the broad audience that the cable news outlets broadcast to.

A clear understanding and transparency of the government and its policies is a good thing. Integrating media outlets with the government is a way to do this, the problem however is biased broadcasting that Americans see throughout the news media. Nobody really expects ABC to broadcast an unbiased look at the Presidents health care plan, but everybody expects ABC to try. In the end does it really matter however? ABC’s ratings have been the lowest in more than 20 years…maybe nobody will even notice. Maybe they should try to broadcast both sides of the argument?