In this, one of the most interesting of election years, the media has done its best to destroy journalistic fairness in favor of unrelenting and unbelievable bias against Hillary Clinton and favoring Barack Obama. We have to tip our hats off to the following rogues gallery of relentlessly pro-Obama and anti-Clinton media.
CNN is the holder of this year's over-the-top media bias award. After hiring Roland Martin in February 2007, CNN seemingly went out of its way from the Cafferty files to Donna Brazile to blast Senator Clinton and President Clinton and support Obama. It is difficult to find the most pro-Obama person on board. Is this a competition between Cooper Anderson (who is not two people) and Roland Martin? Should we include Cafferty in this mix?
Martin became a one man wrecking crew for Obama beginning before the Nevada primary. But his zenith remains his commentary during and after the South Carolina primary, culminating the day of the primary when he used an hour or so on CNN to blast the Clintons as racists again and again.
Cooper Anderson comes in at number two. Anderson has fawned over Obama repeatedly, reaching his own zenith in statements made during one program designed solely to promote Obama as a candidate that Obama himself had to distance himself from Anderson's hero worship.
Although no one has such a condescending and hate-filled tone against Hillary Clinton as Jack Cafferty, his influence is not as great as the other two and his "files" have managed to include pro-Clinton statements. So, despite his apparently deep-seated personal animosity against Hillary Clinton, he is number three.
NBC, MSNBC, and Newsvine together represent the hitherto unheard of coalescence of major media, cable news, and blogosphere into one wicked pro-Obama combination. Spearheaded by Chris Matthews, the most blatant of all anti-Clinton sexists who moved his career from backwater to national stage by attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton and who turned Republican sometime during his early media career, MSNBC and NBC have taken themselves to the brink and beyond of media propriety.
At various times in this election year, MSNBC and its affiliates have called Chelsea Clinton a pimp for her mother (thereby making Hillary Clinton a whore), a statement that got the speaker a minor suspension before regaining his MSNBC footing, Hillary Clinton too cold and too emotional within days of each other, and belittled and laughed at Hillary Clinton and her 41 point West Virginia win, denigrating West Virginia voters in the process.
The strength of these three media organizations promotion of Obama makes one wonder whether the rumor that General Electric is trying to sell them at bargain basement prices is correct.
The Associated Press has practically single-handedly seeded all written media with stories promoting Obama while tearing down the Clintons. In "Florida, Michigan cannot save Clinton" reporter Nedra Pickler and the Associated Press threw caution to the wind and addressed Hillary Clinton as follows: "Sorry, Sen. Clinton. Michigan and Florida can't save your campaign." The Associated Press, an organization controlled by pro-Obama newspapers and other media, has often built pro-Obama and anti-Clinton baselines into their articles. From their delegate "counts" to their reporting of polls, the AP must be considered one of the linchpins of Obama's success.
Many newspapers have had a generally consistent pro-Obama message. Their methods include not only a consistently pro-Obama message, but also ignoring or editorially diminishing clearly relevant national events that might adversely affect Obama.
The Wright controversy was ignored twice by the McClatchey newspapers in North Carolina. At its beginning this year, the Raleigh News & Observer's Public Editor castigated that paper's failure to publish practically anything about Wright when the controversy was raging nationwide.
Let's look first at the Jeremiah Wright case. The story about the preacher's heated rhetoric has been out there for about a year and a half, particularly on talk radio, but it took center stage last weekend when major media focused on it. The Washington Post and The New York Times published reports Saturday, and the cable networks and talk radio flogged the story throughout the weekend.
The N&O ran nothing on Saturday, a paragraph Sunday in an election roundup story and a sidebar inside Monday's paper. After Obama's much-ballyhooed address on race Tuesday, the paper ran an Associated Press story that looked closely at Obama's pastor and his church, Trinity United Church of Christ.
In defense of her decision on behalf of the paper to withhold an issue of national importance, the pro-Obama editor who provided two days covering Obama's Philadelphia "race speech," stated that she felt that the initial reporting was not a fair understanding of the situation, a statement right out of Obama's playbook.
Linda Williams, N&O senior editor, defended the Wright coverage. The N&O's focus is on local news, especially on the front page, she said, and the Wright story had to compete with the Eve Carson tragedy and other breaking local news.
Plus, she said, the early coverage improperly focused on lightning-rod comments without putting them in perspective -- that Wright built a mainstream, even conservative congregation best known for community activism in lower-income Chicago. "I think the story was journalistically flawed in that it had no context," she said. "It was only late in the game that you started to understand who he [Wright] is." The AP story published Wednesday provided that context. On Friday, The N&O ran a McClatchy Newspapers story that took a more critical look at Trinity United.
Other major newspaper Public Editors and Ombudsmen found similar bias. The Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell faulted the Post's lack of coverage as follows.
"The Post — and some others in the news media — came late to reporting on the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Barack Obama's former Chicago pastor. The story, long there for the picking, touched raw nerves — racial, political and religious — among readers," Ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote Sunday in the Washington Post.
"The New York Times and the Associated Press had detailed accounts of the relationship between Obama and Wright about a year ago; Religion News Service wrote about it in a 2005 story. (The Post subscribes to RNS, and I used to supervise it.) But before March 15, Wright had been in only one substantive Post story — a Feb. 28 piece about Obama trying to reassure Jewish leaders about his support for Israel. Wright has been a strong supporter of the Palestinians. A Chicago Tribune story about the church's theology appeared in The Post on Jan. 28, 2007, but only in an early Sunday street-sales edition."
Wherever you look, national magazines, local and national television, cable, and other print media, unprecedented bias appears. Never before has anyone been the beneficiary of such a biased press, particularly at the time a party nominee is being chosen.
The media have created many of the current perspectives, from the "fair" and "evenhanded" Obama to the shrill, selfish and unlikable Hillary Clinton. And they have largely ignored or made light of Obama failings, such as his blatant sexism and rude manner, including giving Hillary Clinton the finger when talking about her on more than one occasion and turning his back on her at this year's State of the Union address, and his relationships with radicals.
Perhaps more amazing than this relentless often nonsensical bias against Hillary Clinton and in favor of Barack Obama is Clinton's continuing viability as a candidate.
This bias and the apparent reaction of the public to such bias may be the real issue for the November elections. Can the media distort McCain's record and protect Obama to the same degree as they have done so during the Democratic Party campaign when a national election is at stake? Indeed, will the press "turn against" Obama by asking hard questions during the presidential race?
The most amazing news organization in this election year is Fox News. Fox News has in the minds of many Hillary Clinton supporters and others become the most fair and balanced of all media organizations. Just how powerfully the market for news will influence future press coverage may depend largely on whether Fox News ratings and commercial success increase during this election year.