Bloggers Rip Fox
Over Screen Text
About Mrs. Obama
By SAM SCHECHNER and REBECCA DANA
June 13, 2008; Page A5

For the second time this week, Fox News Channel was driven to respond to criticism over on-air statements about Barack Obama, in this case for screen text that described the Democratic presidential candidate’s wife as “Obama’s baby mama.” The term is often applied pejoratively to unwed mothers.

Television news organizations, facing unprecedented scrutiny, have often expressed contrition for poorly chosen words during this election season.

The latest controversy arose over screen text in a Fox News segment.

In a campaign that includes the first viable African-American presidential candidate, the lines of appropriate speech have become fuzzy. News organizations are under pressure from a broad network of self-appointed watchdogs, including organized groups like Media Matters and individuals. These watchdogs are likely to remain vigilant about gaffes, misstatements and potentially biased language through the November vote. Just this week, Gina McCauley, a well-known blogger in Austin, Texas, started michelleobamawatch.com to track the portrayal of Mrs. Obama in the news media.

In this campaign cycle, television news organizations have issued at least 10 apologies in total over on-air expressions. On Tuesday, a Fox News anchor, E.D. Hill, said she regretted suggesting that a celebratory hand gesture between Barack and Michelle Obama might be a “terrorist fist jab.” On Monday, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell apologized for calling southwest Virginia “redneck country.”

Fox News is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Employees at Time Warner Inc.’s CNN and General Electric Co.’s MSNBC, and a contributor to Fox News have all confused “Obama” and “Osama” in the last year in one form or another, and apologized for the mistake.

The most-recent dust-up began Wednesday afternoon during a segment on Fox News by commentator Michelle Malkin about conservative attacks on Michelle Obama. At the bottom of the screen, a headline said, “Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama’s Baby Mama!”

One Fox News viewer saw the phrase on screen, and emailed a tip to the Web magazine Salon, according to Alex Koppelman, who runs a political blog for the magazine. Mr. Koppelman says he verified the viewer’s claim using a Web site called Redlasso, which offers an archive of television news clips, and posted an item online.

In a statement Thursday, Fox News’s senior vice president of programming, Bill Shine, said, “A producer on the program exercised poor judgment” in choosing the screen text. The Obama campaign declined to comment.

“I was a little surprised about how quickly it got picked up and turned into a really big thing,” Mr. Koppelman said Thursday. “If it’s not already happening more than it has in previous cycles, I’m sure it will because of technology.”

The phrase baby mama or baby mother is Caribbean in origin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as “the mother of a man’s child, who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner.” It has gained wider currency in recent years through use in hip-hop lyrics and celebrity magazines. A movie called “Baby Mama,” starring Tina Fey, has been in theaters since April. The movie is about a single executive who hires another woman to carry her baby.

Ms. Malkin, who is noted for trenchant criticism, said on her Web site that she had nothing to do with the on-screen headline. She pointed out that Mrs. Obama herself used the phrase “my baby’s daddy” to refer to her husband in 2004. But that phrase doesn’t imply unwed status, many blog commentators argued.

Among friends, “baby mama” could be construed as friendly or a joke, according to Bakari Kitwana, an artist in residence at the University of Chicago who has written about the phrase in his book “The Hip Hop Generation.” But he says its use to describe the wife of a presidential candidate is disrespectful.

“Michelle Obama is not Fox News’s homegirl,” Mr. Kitwana said. “You’re taking something out of its culture and political context.”
The Obama campaign, both naturally and by design, has ushered some aspects of African-American culture into the mainstream. On one occasion, Mr. Obama brushed off his shoulder in a gesture signifying dismissal of criticism, silently reminding his audience of a song called “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” by the hip-hop artist Jay-Z. The episode generated big attention in news media.

“This campaign has shown that people are excited to use black language for the first time in presidential politics,” says Sarah E. Lewis, a faculty member at Yale University School of Art, and doctoral candidate focusing on representations of African-American culture. “But as they do it, often they’re putting their feet in their mouths because they don’t fully understand the culture.”

Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com 1 and Rebecca Dana at rebecca.dana@wsj.com 2