Media bias is the most rampant it's ever been

Right now McCain is trailing Obama in the polls by a small margin, and that is actually quite remarkable, considering the fact that Obama is outspending McCain on advertisements by 3 to 1, and that Newspapers, News outlets, and the entertainment are heavily biased towards Obama. In short, McCain is fighting a huge uphill battle against the mass media. Considering his age, and what he's up against, he's actually making quite a heroic effort.

What's amazing to me, is how many people think the American media are objective here. Some of them actually claim that they are biased toward McCain!

If you didn't already notice the obvious, there are now a couple of serious studies that back me up.

First the "news" media, according to the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan organization:

The good news for John McCain? He's now receiving as much attention from the national media as his Democratic rival. The bad news? It’s overwhelmingly negative.

Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative — the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets.

Then, the entertainment industry, according to the AP:

From Sept. 1 through Friday, the Republicans were the target of 475 jokes by Jay Leno and David Letterman alone. The Democratic team of Obama and Joe Biden were the victim 69 times, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has been tracking such data since 1988. That's nearly a 7-to-1 ratio.
In no other campaign over the last 20 years has one party's ticket been jabbed more than the other by even a 2-to-1 ratio, said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center.
Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have a similar imbalance. The center doesn't even consider Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson and others — including the season's breakout comedy star, Tina Fey imitating Sarah Palin.

Of course, the irony is that they may put themselves out of a job. People like Stewart and Colbert have formed their entire success around George Bush's presidency. Who are they going to mock if the Republicans are no longer in control?

In a related and stunning article, a long-time writer and former PBS host, Michael S. Malone, explains why he's ashamed to be known as a journalist:

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist. [...]

But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current Presidential campaign. Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass - no, make that shameless support - they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press. [...]

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 Senators Obama and Biden. If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as President of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography. That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: his job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote McCain’s lawyer, haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer - when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Senator Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

The media will get the President that they deserve.



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