Why Did the Press Get Huck Wrong?

Published on February 3, 2008

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism runs a website called Nieman Watchdog that bills itself as revealing the “Questions the press should ask.” Usually it’s pretty decent, but a Feb. 1 post by political scientist Laura Olson, “Huckabee and the Religious Right,” misses the mark by a mile. “”…none of the old lions of the Religious […]

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism runs a website called Nieman Watchdog that bills itself as revealing the “Questions the press should ask.” Usually it’s pretty decent, but a Feb. 1 post by political scientist Laura Olson, “Huckabee and the Religious Right,” misses the mark by a mile. “”…none of the old lions of the Religious Right endorsed Huckabee,” writes Olson. Problem is, that’s just not true. Frederick Clarkson corrects the record. Facts aside — very aside, in this case — why did so many mainstream reporters insist on presenting Huckabee as an outsider to the religious right? What was the master narrative? Was it simply Huck’s likability that led them to dissassociate themselves from some unlikable characters? Or was it the result of a more basic conventional wisdom determined to declare Christian conservatism dead, facts be damned?

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