Spin Masters

The biggest story of the election was how the media ignoredthe biggest story of the election. Amid all the breathless coverage of a nonexistent war on women,there was little or no coverage of Obama’s war on the economy—how, forinstance, part-time work is replacing full-time work, how low-wage jobs arereplacing high-wage ones, how for Americans between the ages of twenty-fiveand fifty-four thereare fewer jobs today than there were when the recession officially ended in2009, and fewer, in fact, than at any time since mid-1997. The downsizing of the American economy wasn’t the only storythe media missed—or suppressed—there was also the unraveling of Obama’s foreignpolicy and the deadly scandals at home (Fast and Furious) and abroad (theterrorist attack that killed the American ambassador at Benghazi). But instead of serious, substantive journalism, the mediareported ad nauseam on trifles (Big Bird), Republican-baiting hysteria (howeverything the Republicans said was allegedly “racial code”), and distortionsof Romney’s remarks (such as the “47 percent” comment). The media dropped the ball in covering the 2012 election, saysDavid Freddoso, editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner, and in doing so, the media failedin their responsibility to keep politicians honest and the publicwell-informed. Freddoso, a New York Times bestselling authorand former congressional reporter for National Review, fills thisvolume not only with outrageous examples of media bias but also with dozens ofreal stories that genuinely inquisitive reporters should have relished but thatthe overwhelmingly liberal press didn’t even bother to cover. Full of the news you didn’t hear about in 2012, DavidFreddoso’s Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and HelpedReelect Barack Obama will be the most provocative and accurate take ofjust how Barack Obama managed to get reelected amid the worst economic timessince at least the 1970s—and how the media helped him do it.