During Barack Obama's visit to Europe, several European media outlets took issue with the coverage of his trip by the U.S. media. But while American pundits were debating whether the U.S. media were too biased in favor of Obama, a number of European journalists found their American counterparts excessively cool toward him.
"Obamania? Not in America," read the headline of a commentary by Dieter Schnaas in the German weekly business magazine WirtschaftsWoche July 25. Schnaas claimed that Obama's foreign tour had been viewed "in the U.S. media as "fake evidence' of his foreign policy experience." Similarly, the British daily the Independent reported July 26 that "the world has been bewitched by his [Obama's] tour. But Americans are less impressed."
An article in the German center-right daily die Welt July 25 accused the U.S. media and the American people of not paying enough attention to Obama and the election , a strange claim in view of the unprecedented media circus that has surrounded the campaign, and particularly Obama. The article reported that:
"The euphoria which greeted Barack Obama in Berlin has not reverberated to the U.S., and the media coverage of Obama's speech in Berlin was only moderate."
Furthermore, according to die Welt, most Americans are vacationing at this time of the year, and are paying little attention to politics or to Obama's foreign trip:
"This Sunday only 100 days will be left until the Presidential election, but in the U.S. it is still vacation time. Barack Obama's foreign trip was the latest hurrah in this three week long period, in which Americans forget about politics."
The die Welt piece cited a report from Paris by Steven Erlanger in The New York Times as evidence of the negative American reaction to Obama's Berlin speech, intended as a major foreign policy statement. Erlanger wrote that the speech was "vague on crucial issues of trade, defense and foreign policy." According to European politicians and pundits Erlanger interviewed, Obama would have to move beyond rhetoric and provide more substance if he became president.
Die Welt and other European newspapers interpreted Erlanger's article as criticism of their favored presidential candidate. A dispatch from the Norwegian news agency NTB, which ran in Norway's biggest daily Verdens Gang, used the Erlanger article and a report by Fox News to portray the American reception of Obama's speech as negative and skeptical. Obama's speech was "met with skepticism in the U.S.," and American commentators thought Obama was "clever with words, but vague on issues," according to Verdens Gang. Similarly, an article by the Swedish press agency TT, printed in the daily Sydsvenskan, reported that "Barack Obama's Berlin speech was hailed by the Germans, but received cool reactions in the U.S."
Try Reading the Article
It should be noted, however, that the reporters who used Erlanger's piece as proof of a negative American reaction to Obama's speech had clearly not read the article properly. Erlanger was reporting from France on the European, not the American, reaction. And it should be no surprise to anyone that the conservative-leaning Fox News would be less than ecstatic over Obama's performance.
This post was written by Ola Ulmo, Transatlantic Media Network Intern
