November 10th 2008

Who Met With Who?!

T

he media bias never ceases … and never ceases to amaze me. Today, President-elect Obama came to the White House at the invitation of President Bush, and how does the Washington Post headline it on its home page?

Bush Meets with Obama at the White House

I kind of thought it was the other way around. Usually when you accept someone’s invitation and go to their place, you’re meeting with them. WaPo and the rest of the Mainly Marginalized Media just don’t know when to stop. Heck, I don’t think they even know how to stop.

The actual story, BTW, has a more moderate headline: Obamas Make Symbolic Visit to Future Home: White House.

How fitting for a guy whose entire political career has ridden on symbolism.

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November 8th 2008

WaPo Fesses Up: Bias, Bias, Bias

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he Washington Post’s Ombudsman, Deborah Howell, will wait until tomorrow’s issue - five days after the election - to deal critically with the Post’s efforts to throw the election to Obama. Here’s what she found in her analysis of WaPo’s coverage:

  • OpEd pages: 32 favorable pieces on Obama vs 13 favorable McCain pieces, and 58 negative op/eds on McCain vs just 32 on Obama
  • More Obama photos (311) than McCain photos (282), with Obama leading McCain in large pictures ,small pictures and color (can I say that) pictures
  • More Obama news stories (946) than McCain news stories (786), which she explains in part by the longer Dem primaries, but admits that after the conventions, Obama got 626 stories and McCain got 584

Howell doesn’t analyze the stories’ content, which is unfortunate, but she admits that they were biased towards Obama:

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

Howell apparently doesn’t think the entire “spread the wealth” meme and various radical associations are worth even bringing up.

What’s WaPo going to do with this information? Nothing, as far as I can tell. Here’s what WaPo political editor Bill Hamilton had to say to Howell about the coverage, and it doesn’t sound like a man who’s the least bit worried about his role in further damaging the credibility of our free press:

“There are a lot of things I wish we’d been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don’t at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion.”

Yeah, but gee Bill, don’t you think the campaign would have been even more interesting if you and your peers had actually, you know, covered it?

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October 31st 2008

Media Bias #102

Of Course The LA Times Can Hold Khalidi Tape - WaPo

The editorial writers at the Washington Post have completely dispensed with debate. No longer is there a pretense from them that facts are needed to prove their position; no longer are efforts required to rebut the other side. When it comes to Obama, no debate is needed. He wins, the other guy loses. ‘Nuff said.

This time, it’s today’s editorial, none too subtly named An ‘Idiot Wind’ (how nice of them to put quotes around ‘idiot’). It attacks the McCain campaign for discussing the association between Obama and Rashid Khalidi, and the sequestered LA Times tape. Here’s what WaPo has to say about the latter:

To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

That’s it. Certainly, WaPo could rightly argue that breaking a promise to a source is a ludicrous proposition, but to say that the tape contains nothing damning even though they’ve never seen it - now that’s ludicrous! It the sort of thing someone covering their ears and screaming “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” would do.

Hmmm.

And of the questions McCain has raised about Khalidi and Obama?

We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” That’s good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign’s increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Now shut up. Your concerns have been settled for you by those who know more than you.

Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.

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June 28th 2008

Witch Hunt For “Obama’s A Muslim” E-Mailer

T

his definitely warrants looking into.

That’s the subject line of an email received by Institute for Advanced Study scholar Danielle Allen - and, boy, did she end up looking into it.

Allen’s field of study is the machinery of politics and her candidate is Barack Obama, so when she received this email claiming Obama is hiding his Muslim roots and could be Islam’s Manchurian Candidate, she decided to dig. After all, her job required nothing more of her than that she think - no classes to teach, no papers to publish.

The whole deal is laid out in a four-clicker from WaPo today, and it’s a marginally interesting read from an Internet sleuthing angle … and a raucous read from a freedom of speech point of view and definitely from blind political bias point of view.

Continue reading “Witch Hunt For “Obama’s A Muslim” E-Mailer”

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With Obama winning the presidency by seven percent, we can't blame the media. Their laudatory coverage and refusal to extensively probe into Obama's background and [lack of] experience was at best responsible for five percent of his vote, the pundits tell us. Here is a compilation of over 100 significant instances of pro-Obama/anti-McCain bias during the 2008 campaign.

For all 'Media Bias 2008' – Click Here