Time Really Did Not Want Obama To Be Person Of The Year, It Seems

by Robert Quigley | 12:57 pm, December 16th, 2009

» 10 comments

After all of the speculation that Barack Obama was going to be Time‘s Person of the Year for the second year in a row — making him the second person to win two consecutive years since Richard Nixon – the award went to … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Who may not sell magazine covers, but is a defensible choice.

But, there’s more. Since announcing the pick, Time has been sending a handful of signals that seem to say that President Obama, who was announced to be a finalist for the award on Monday, really, really was not in contention after all.

First: Time Communications’ Twitter feed. See this tweet (which linked to Time‘s piece on General McChrystal), and conspicuously didn’t mention Obama as a runner-up:

Ok: Twitter is Twitter. Maybe they ran out of space? But then, there’s this 1100+ word press release, which doesn’t even mention Obama’s name.

Finally, Time‘s full list of runners-up and “notable people” puts Obama in #12, behind the likes of Glenn Beck and Jay Leno. What gives?

Here’s what a Time spokesperson had to say to Mediaite about the Person of the Year lists:

“The selection of Person of the Year is not a scientific process. This is a subjective choice by the editors of TIME. We consult with all of our correspondents domestically and internationally. We hear from readers on TIME.com – more than 1.3 million people voted in our online poll this year. Though this poll does NOT select the POY. The senior editors discuss the options and the managing editor makes the final decision.”

Reading between the lines: Time‘s editors went out of their way to stick it to Obama, if only to defy conventional wisdom. When Time conducted a reader poll earlier this month asking who should be Person of the Year, Obama came in second, behind the Iranian protesters. Bernanke came in sixth. Of course, the poll said that “TIME’s editors reserve the right to disagree,” and they availed themselves of that right, going so far as to put Dr. Thomas Frieden (who?) ahead of the president.

Appearing on the Today Show this morning to announce the Person of the Year, Time editor Richard Stengel seemed to acknowledge the expectation that Obama would be the anointed winner by shooting him down at the start. He called Obama “not enough:” “He could be the person of the year every year, but not this year.”

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ChrisNH

Whew…this should put to rest the debate on whether TIME is ‘Liberally-biased’ (roll eyes).
m

TIME has a liberal bias they love Obama-THE MESSIAH. Part of the mainstream media cabal!!!!
Snipzor

I seem to recall a series of right-wing posters bitching about how Time was OBVIOUSLY going to pick Obama, oh they had to pick Obama, no doubt they were going to pick them. One of their guys called him god (Apparently), of course they were going to pick him.
rmbltmbl

Bernanke is just as terrible as Obama.. but I guess since he doesn’t have to go through a democratic process, he is worse.
TfT

Snipzor: That was me, but I was wrong. It was Newsweek editor Evan Thomas who said:: “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.” I got my liberal magazines mixed up.
Snipzor

@TfT

To be honest I thought it was part of Time myself, so saying apparently was a bad way of saying “Probably, might have been someone else though, I don’t know or care”. We aren’t the first to make the mistake though, apparently.
TfT

Too bad Glynnis already posted her moment of Glenn today; Glenn is having fun with Time’s man of the year and the other finalists.

Too bad they didn’t pick Nancy — here is her latest:

No Health Care deal this year. Nancy will work to ‘try to send House-Senate compromise to White House before State of Union’…
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

It kind of surprises me that Matt Taibbi hasn’t posted more than a sentence of wonderment to hisblog, but clearly they couldn’t name Obama because of all the “in the tank” kind of comments and well, his friends have been a bit disappointed lately…
ImNotBlue

Snipzor says:
December 16, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Actually… of their top 10 list… Obama made the most sense. Twitter was still a better pick… or the protesters. But since Obama has been on the cover how many other times… and since they want to continue to deny bias without ALL of the audience laughing at them, they can’t always put him on the cover.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Cullum-Rogers/100000176291838 Cullum Rogers

Time almost never names the same Person of the Year twice in a row, especially if that person is President of the United States. The only exception was Nixon in 1971 and 1972 — and in ’72 he shared the honors with Henry Kissinger. Besides Obama in 2009, this list of Presidents who *weren’t* named POY includes FDR in 1933, JFK in 1962, LBJ in 1965 and 1968, and Reagan in 1981. They’d all been POY the previous year.