There has been a good deal of clucking about the network news anchors following Barack Obama to Iraq and Europe. The attention lavished on him is hard on John McCain, it is argued, and demonstrates conclusively the liberal bias of the broadcast press.

There is another way of looking at things. Mr. McCain was lucky he was largely left alone when he walked through the Potemkin marketplace in Baghdad, specially cleared of terrorists for the occasion, or when Joe Lieberman audibly corrected him, like a prompter in a school play, when in Iraq he confused Sunnis with Shias. Sometimes the absence of the press can be a good thing for those not quite ready for their close-up.

The problem with the television circus surrounding Mr. Obama’s pre-victory lap is rather more serious than a mere matter of ensuring equal time and prominence for each candidate. The three anchors — Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charles Gibson — have persuaded their budget-conscious network news executives, who watch their dwindling ratings with alarm, that the trip is worth splashing out on because Mr. Obama is “making history.”

They are not entirely wrong. As the first black presidential candidate, everything the senator does is unprecedented. Even if he loses, he will have made history of a sort and can expect to find his face, before long, on a postage stamp. And if he makes it to the White House, whether he turns out to be a good or bad president, he will have a place reserved for his head on a coin or a bill.

But it would be foolish to imagine that the evening news anchors have rushed to the Middle East and Europe simply because Mr. Obama’s progress is making history. This is not about him, it is about them. By reporting on Mr. Obama’s “historic” overseas visit, they are hoping to have written themselves a significant part in our nation’s narrative.

The evening news and broadcast journalism are not what they were. Audiences for the 20-odd scant minutes of headlines the evening bulletins allow are fast aging and even faster diminishing. Wedged between advertisements for incontinence pants and erectile dysfunction pills, the trio of Mr. Gibson, Mr. Williams, and Ms. Couric are a pale shadow of those who have gone before. All that is left of a once powerful pulpit presence is a concerned look and a portentous way of reading the teleprompter.

The days of Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow are long gone and with them the power those giants of broadcasting wielded. Once, a president was doomed if he were to lose the confidence of the troika who delivered the news. When Cronkite opined after the Tet offensive that the Vietnam War was all but lost, Lyndon Johnson concluded, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” When Murrow exposed Joseph McCarthy as a poisonous slanderer and bully, the red-baiter’s reign of terror drew to its end.

Mr. Obama’s journey, ostensibly to show his foreign policy credentials, is therefore a rare chance for the anchors to try to regain if not the influence at least for a short while the prominence of their predecessors. They can only do this by exaggerating the importance of what they are reporting. If, as they suggest, Mr. Obama’s European jaunt is truly “historic,” they cannot afford to be critical. He must be portrayed as a president in waiting, a prophet biding his time, a hero awaiting destiny’s call.

This bodes badly for the role of the press during an Obama presidency. Coupled with the adulation of uncritical reporters eager to cut themselves in on a piece of American history is the penchant of Mr. Obama’s posse for deterring critics by accusing them of “playing the race card” whenever they dare point out their candidate’s shortcomings.

Apart from displaying Mr. Obama’s pomposity and lack of humor, the hullabaloo over portraying the Obamas as Islamist terrorists on the New Yorker cover demonstrated the success of his campaign managers’ strategy: normal critical standards cannot be applied to their “historic” candidate without attracting hurt opprobrium.

So far, Mr. Obama has enjoyed an easy ride. A large faction in the press held off scrutinizing him while they reveled in upsetting the “inevitability” of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. The press continues to give Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt as he jettisons with unseemly haste the liberal positions that caused him to win the nomination.

But if the policies, characters, and judgment of both candidates are not rigorously scrutinized, the election will be little more than a coronation. And if Mr. Obama reaches the White House, will the press continue to hold their breath rather than upset the “historical” narrative they have assigned him?

Sometimes good reporting can be uncomfortable, but the best journalists persist, even when their less rigorous colleagues and the public would prefer bromides. Murrow knew that the truth could be painful. As he once said when bringing unspeakable facts to a disbelieving audience, “If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry.”

nwapshott@nysun.com