Has Obama been set up? Today on our weekly roundtable we look at the media’s continuing fascination with Barack Obama’s supposed hypocrisy. It dominated the Sunday talk shows, but is it news? Justin Peters, Managing Web Editor at Columbia Journalism Review’s campaign desk says it’s hardly a shift and that the Senator used exactly the same language in an interview with CBS in February. The coverage is an example of a bad trend in journalism: reporting the debate but not the policy.

There were, however, good stories on important policy issues. Not surprisingly from the independent press. A story on healthcare in the Rochester Catholic Courier brings a national story down to the local level and vice versa.

Erica Gonzalez, Editorial Page Editor at El Diario/La Prensa, says that the NYT’s coverage of immigration in a series by Julia Preston provides a somewhat counterintuitive reading of the immigration debate. And Theodore Hamm, Editor of The Brooklyn Rail and author of The New Blue Media, though no fan of Rush Limbaugh, says there’s much to be learned from the NYT Magazine’s recent profile of the larger than life figure. And perhaps even from Limbaugh himself.

As the G8 summit kicks we off we ask our panelists what we can expect to see in the media coverage and what we would like to see. The passing of Jesse Helms and why the media are reluctant to speak ill of the dead. Peters says you’ve got to at least mention his history as an obstructionist and anti-civil rights crusader. Find out here if the obits were honest.

And Colombia’s humanitarian ruse. Our roundtable discusses how the staging of a mock humanitarian mission to secure the release of hostages may imperil future aid efforts. All that and more on GRITtv.