Today on the radio, James Dobson accused Senator Obama of “distorting the Bible” in a two year old speech. As a result, as of this moment, there are 599 related stories on Google news and cable news stations have been running clips of Dobson's attacks multiple times per hour.

But isn't news supposed to be new? As in, previously unknown information?

James Dobson not being a fan of Obama is not news. As the Christian Broadcasting Network notes with an appropriate dash of sarcasm, "Now here's a news flash - James Dobson is not a Barack Obama supporter. He is not a Democrat. "

The media's repeated hyping of this story further implies that James Dobson somehow represents the views of the American evangelical population and that his attacks on Obama will have major consequences. While Dobson was repeatedly identified as a leader of the evangelical movement in news stories today, there was no mention of the fact that many evangelicals do not share his political views or feel that he represents them.

As the recent Evangelical Manifesto recognizes: “Evangelicals have no supreme leader or official spokesperson, so no one speaks for all Evangelicals, least of all those who claim to.” Moreover, the 2006 American Values Survey found that 44% of the Americans expressed that leaders such as Dobson did not represent their political views well or not at all.

Thankfully, the media has also lately noticed the emergence of a new generation of evangelicals interested in new leaders, discussing political issues from a different mindset and a broader agenda than that of old guard leaders like James Dobson.

But we didn't hear anything about this trend today. Today it was all old news.