Are you ashamed of the biased presidential coverage?

Joe the Plumber was worth the closer look because he was presented by McCain as someone who would be negatively impacted by Obama's policy. I've read the stories, most of them were not biased, and came to the conclusion on my own that it's not the case.

As far as Spnited's question, perhaps ashamed is the wrong word. I'm embarrassed by it. I think it's a blight on the profession. I work very hard to keep my political beliefs out of my stories. The national media even has more responsibility to do that since they reach so many more people.

I will say that TV has been the worst offender (and no, Fox News does not cancel out the bias of the supposedly respectbale TV stations).
If I only read newspaper stories about the campaign, I might not feel embarrassed at all about the coverage. But I would and do feel left wanting for more critical reporting on Obama.

As far as Devil's point, how many of those hits are blogs? Probably a good many. And Waylon may be right that it's not respectable media's job to chase down every wild accusation bandied about by the blogs and McCain's campaign, but I do feel Obama could have been scrutinized more. It's obvious some reporters don't question him on anything.

I did enjoy the Reinventing of McCain piece in the New York Times Magazine last week. I thought it was very insightful in how a candidate who in 2000 was, in a way, Obama before Obama was Obama, basically transformed into George W. Bush. The media loved McCain back then. And to be fair to the media, he pissed a lot of that away himself by employing the Rove method of trying to control and manipulate the media and the message. That's the biggest reason the media has backfired on him, not a liberal bias.

In short, what I'm saying is question McCain, question Palin, question Biden and question Obama. It doesn't feel like the latter is happening enough.

 

You do realize that the tone of the last two months of the campaign has been mostly centered around the Republicans, right? That's because of their own actions and decisions -- they've been the most newsworthy, and subsequently, the most questioned.

If Obama had been making the crazy decisions that McCain has been making, he'd be getting critiqued more, too. But he's not. That doesn't make the presidential coverage "biased." These guys are setting the tone. Obama got plenty of questioning during the primary season, when he supposedly "couldn't close the deal" and he and Clinton were the center of attention. The focus has changed now, despite all of McCain's efforts to make this election all about Obama -- which it's not.

 

Kinda like this MSM interview with Biden in Florida:

 

I'm embarrassed by that. Holy shit.

 

The news media bias is evident to everyone except the left. And Fox can't even begin to tip the scales to even. My most memorable instances of media bias in this campaign:

1. The New York Times sneaking accusations into a story about John McCain's alleged affair, then asleep at the switch (or merely ignoring it), along with the rest of the MSM, when it was obvious John Edwards had a girlfriend and a love child.

2. Of course, some of you will scream: "But you can't run with someone just on the basis of the National Enquirier!!!" But the MSM ran with crap about Sarah Palin's daughter actually being the mother of the Downs Syndrome baby on the basis of left-wing blogs -- no better than the NI.

3. Charles Gibson's patronizing, snide, haughty, superior, self-righteous line and tone of questioning to Palin. If he had done the same damn thing to Joe Biden, Biden would have ended the interview in the same way he cut it off with the Orlando TV news babe last week.

4. Chris Matthews' tingling sensation in his leg.

5. Keith Olberman's "How Dare You" Mr. Bush. I don't care if you're right and he's wrong. You don't lecture the President of the United States. You have some common courtesy.

6. James Carville predicting violence in the streets if Obama loses, and no one calling him virtually inciting riots.

I got more, but I'm on deadine.

 

I'm ashamed of Michael S. Malone.

 

Aww shucks!

 

Then why the hell are you posting?

 

Like Barack Obama, I can multi-task.

 

I think there has been a lot of bias in the media, but I really wonder if people aren't confusing "bad news" with bias. A lot of the stuff that has hurt McCain has been actual soundbites he's made, actual McCain supporters behaving badly, campaign gaffes, actual vetting by reporters. I hear a lot of talk about bias, but I don't hear a lot of "that story is complete crap" like after the NYT's piece on McCain's "affair."
These aren't things that were faked. In some cases, the bad press came about on issues or things that the McCain camp itself was pushing.

 

These guys tried to get Ayers too:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Vote2008/story?id=6120141&page=1

 

Ok, that was funny, hondo. Credit where it's due.

Here is my respectful response:

1. The New York Times sneaking accusations into a story about John McCain's alleged affair, then asleep at the switch (or merely ignoring it), along with the rest of the MSM, when it was obvious John Edwards had a girlfriend and a love child.

The NYT McCain/lobbyist/affair story was extremely tawdry, and and the insinuation that Johnny Mac was humping her was absolutely indefensible. I would argue, however, that it's not exactly analogous to the Edwards thing because the real point of the story was that McCain had ties to lobbyists despite his bold and declarative stance that he was not beholden to special interests. Meanwhile, he was writing letters to the the FCC on her behalf. Edwards story certainly could have been looked into, at least by today's gossipy standards, but whether or not he was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife isn't quite a matter of policy. I guess it's a gray area, since he was trying to sell himself as the honorable family man. We'll concede that you're partially right here.


2. Of course, some of you will scream: "But you can't run with someone just on the basis of the National Enquirier!!!" But the MSM ran with crap about Sarah Palin's daughter actually being the mother of the Downs Syndrome baby on the basis of left-wing blogs -- no better than the NI.


I want to see actual evidence of this. I think you wish this had happened, and suspect that it happened, but I'd like some evidence that it actually did. Andrew Sullivan posted the question on his blog for the Atlantic. That's about as close to the MSM as this story came. Please provide a link, or a nexis mention, or something that says Bristol Palin was the mom of Trig.

3. Charles Gibson's patronizing, snide, haughty, superior, self-righteous line and tone of questioning to Palin. If he had done the same damn thing to Joe Biden, Biden would have ended the interview in the same way he cut it off with the Orlando TV news babe last week.

This is really silly. Gibson asked a lot of open-ended questions that Palin fumbled badly. He wasn't the slightest big combative or patronizing. Couric was both, I will concede, but Palin still should have been able to handle the questions, which were easy. Every other candidate -- from Hillary to Edwards to Guiliani to Huck to Mittens to Paul to Kucinich -- had answered questions like these throughout the campaign and mostly handled them with easy. Palin's ignorance is not proof of bias. I think if she had a year to formulate these positions, she would have aced both the Couric and Gibson interviews. But she clearly had not ever really thought about this stuff. And that's not her fault, it's McCain's.

4. Chris Matthews' tingling sensation in his leg.

Mathews gets a boner over all kinds of stuff, and it's hardly limited to Democrats, and hardly proof of any bias, since he seems to drool both ways. To wit, how is this ridiculous fawning over Bush in 2003 during the "Mission Accomplished" not a total disgrace?

Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.


5. Keith Olberman's "How Dare You" Mr. Bush. I don't care if you're right and he's wrong. You don't lecture the President of the United States. You have some common courtesy.

Nothing Olberman or O'Reilly does should ever be presented as evidence of bias because they are not getting paid to be objective news gatherers. They are getting paid as talk show hosts, opinion makers and blowhards. Olberman's stint as an anchor during the Democratic convention was over the top, and yes, NBC should not have allowed him to try and fill that role. We'll give you a point here.

6. James Carville predicting violence in the streets if Obama loses, and no one calling him virtually inciting riots.

Carville, again, is a political pundit and opinion giver, not a news producer, and to suggest that he was try to "incite" riots is intellectually dishonest. He's also, I would argue, a washed up moron who has no real influence other than the fact that he occasionally appears on CNN and has repeatedly told us this election that Hillary Clinton was the better candidate and that going with Obama was a huge risk/role of the dice. Neither he, nor Begala, nor Donna Brazille, nor any of the other talking clowns gets to decide how CNN covers a story. I know it's hard to understand this because the lines between journalist and opinion-maker are extremely blurry on television, and that's kind of a shame. But it doesn't mean the entire network is in the tank for Obama just because Keith Olberman or James Carville is.