Seriously. For some time now, its been my considered opinion that most reporters were so far in the tank for Obama that there wasn't an air hose long enough to reach them.
And surprisingly, a fair slew of normal people (ie. not nutty right wing bloggers) have come out and agreed with me.
Mark Halperin of Time Magazine:
"Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history," Halperin was speaking at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.Hey, thats only one guy, and he's probably just trying to get attention. Doesn't he have a book coming out? (Mark C., I'm looking at you : ) )
"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."
Well, if Halperin doesn't move you, how about the Washington Post:
"The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts."Thats a quote from Deborah Howell, the Washington Post Ombudsman. Is she writing a book too?
Even if she is, she's joined in her surmise by Michael Malone of ABCNews, who was pretty unambiguous:
"Nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play."No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del."
Gosh. Attack dogs. That's pretty hard core. They can't ALL be writing books, can they? He must be one of those lone nutters, like John Stossel. Doesn't ABC keep a few of those unreconstructed facists around? We don't have to pay attention to anything he says....
How about the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism?
"The media coverage of the race for president has not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one, according to a new study of the media since the two national political conventions ended.
Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so.
But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one—the most unfavorable of all four candidates—according to the study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Who ever heard of the Pew Research Center? They are nothing but a highly respected, non-partisan "fact tank," sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts -- who also sponsor NPR. We can't trust a word these extremists say!
Well if none of the above convince you, how about the Center For Media and Public Affairs
Coverage of the presidential election on CBS and NBC strongly favors the Democratic presidential ticket, while the coverage on ABC and FOX is more balanced, according to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). The study finds that the three broadcast networks combined have given twice as much good press to the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates as they have to the Republicans, and only FOX has given better press to the GOP ticket than to the Democrats.Manaics! Idiots! Huns! Barbarians!! Visigoths! Unreconstructed Bushites, the lot of them.
Oh, never mind.
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4 comments:
Perhaps it's payback for the way they were fawning over the current idiot-in-chief through his first several years in office, back when his numbskulled greedhead agenda was ignored so we could all focus on how scared we were supposed to be? Perhaps they've realized that, shucks, they have some influence on public opinion, and that tipping the electorate towards continuation of the same intellectually bankrupt course that our current pirate captains have set for the last two terms isn't good for anyone? Just sayin'.
Fawning? Are you kidding me? You could walk from here to Sweden on printouts of nasty articles about Bush, that started coming about before his inauguration and haven't stopped yet.
And even if your ludicrous notion is true, its not what the press is supposed to do. If you want to live in a country where the press furthers the Approved Social Agenda, I suggest China.
Finally, what kind of word is "greedhead" anyway??
I just want to add, I don't particularly care if the press is mean to Bush. I figure if you suit up and enter public life, you gotta take your lumps. It was ever thus --- read some of the stuff the early papers wrote about Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and even George Washington. It will blow your hair back.
First, a greedhead is a greedy person. It's slang I picked up somewhere.
And yes, I do mean fawning. Especially after 9/11, when he was treated like a hero far and wide (at least within American media). Yes, there were dissenters, because he was a murderous dumbshit asshole, but the general media picture was GO GO BUSH YEAH BOMB THOSE PEOPLE W00T.
Of course all of my commentary on American media has to be taken with a grain/lump/truckload of salt, since I'm not there and just observe it from a distance. But this it how it has seemed to me.
And I agree fully that pushing a particular candidate or agenda is not what the news media is *supposed* to do. But, reporters are people. Until the day news reporting is handled by impartial truthbots who know all and filter nothing, we'll have to make do.
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