Every president encounters vehement criticism &mdash; but some readers think The Kansas City Star has let politicking trump news judgment in recent weeks.</p><p>A story on Wednesday&rsquo;s Page A1, under the headline &ldquo;24/7 Obama fills airwaves and beyond,&rdquo; looked at some critics&rsquo; charge that the president&rsquo;s appearances in many different media outlets has rendered his message &ldquo;diluted,&rdquo; in the words of one person.</p><p>Reporter Dave Helling wrote that Obama &ldquo;is raising eyebrows among Republicans and Democrats alike for an extremely aggressive public appearance profile in the first nine months of his presidency.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;My question is how that is supposedly such a big problem,&rdquo; said a caller Thursday. &ldquo;The article says right here that Bush only did four (prime time) press conferences total, and he took a lot of heat from that, we all remember. So you&rsquo;re now listening to the complaints from the noise machine on the right that says the new president is telling us too much, not being secretive? That&rsquo;s following politics, not reporting on what I see as a communicative leader.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;So I am reading along and thinking to myself that it might have been a mistake for the President to have appeared on all the networks,&rdquo; e-mailed another reader. &ldquo;And then in the second half &hellip; the article continues to report polling results that say a majority of Americans do not think the President&rsquo;s message has been overexposed. </p><p>"That being the case, why is this article even a story, much less one that lands on the front page?&rdquo; she asked.</p><p>This is a vein of criticism I&rsquo;ve heard from several readers over the past few months. One caller a few weeks ago told me The Star &ldquo;is letting people who make their living from screaming and yelling set the agenda for what journalists say is news. You should be resistant to that, and not let political operatives tell us what&rsquo;s important, versus the issues actually on the floor of Congress.&rdquo;</p><p>I think that&rsquo;s a very perceptive insight. On one hand, Democrats are getting reacquainted with the relentless barrage of flak thrown at the president &mdash; a phenomenon that supporters of President Bush felt all too well during his presidency. That&rsquo;s one of the realities of the presidency.</p><p>But on the other hand, readers should expect journalists to separate the wheat from the chaff. I&rsquo;ve often heard complaints over crime stories that readers find lurid or tabloidly. </p><p>&ldquo;How, exactly, is this poor teacher in Tyler, Texas being stabbed in the classroom relevant to my life, especially when The Star says its focus is on the local area these days?&rdquo; asked a caller last Thursday, referring to an item in the &ldquo;Today&rsquo;s Top 5&rdquo; list. </p><p>&ldquo;I want to know what&rsquo;s really important, not what cable news has to fill its 24 hours with.&rdquo;