NY Times' Herbert: Media bias indeed; favoring McCain(Updated)

Maybe it will be dismissed as yet another "in the tank" piece by the "librul media." Maybe it will be ignored by "hard-working Americans" because it was written by a black guy. But today's NY Times column, "Getting to Know You", by Bob Herbert feels like a long overdue breath of fresh air from the MSM to me.

But what we’ve learned over the years is that Mr. McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Senator Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that John McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign?

He goes on to deconstruct a few of the most galling foot-in-mouth moments over recent weeks, the kind that we at dKos love to trumpet about. But golly, do I enjoy seeing it inked on newsprint for some reason.

We have a monumental double standard here.

Damn straight we do. I , for one don't want to sit on the sidelines while the other side works the refs ad nauseum once again. The media has succumbed to the Neocon strategy of mountaintop bellowing, "SEE! They all love Obama! SEE! Unfair! UNFAIR!"

Yesterday, the rambling of Shields & Brooks was a long-winded foray into just how much the media is favoring Obama. But just moments earlier on "The News Hour" there were independent analyses showing the fact that McCain has received more media coverage than any other candidate in modern history.

It is only because Obama is such a phenomenon that he has eked out slightly more time than McCain.

What Herbert eloquently illustrates is the fact that the MSM reports do not report on the reality of 2008 McCain.

The mythical John McCain is an affable, straight-talking, moderately conservative war hero who is an expert on foreign policy.

We might just be seeing the first glimmer of hope that this shrill, untrue tactic will be exposed for exactly what it is: A heaping, steaming pile of BS. Herert's column is #3 on the most emailed list at the time of this diary. Let's try to keep it on the list even after the Sunday fodder comes out.
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Update: Holy Crap! A simple shout out like this gets me on the rec list for the 1st time?!? And here I thought for sure my left-coast bias (waking up later) meant someone else had already diaried this. Guess I should write basic stuff like this more often. Cool beans, y'all.
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Update #2:

Thanks to The BBQ Chicken Madness for pointing out that we can make this an action diary by emailing the NY Times & Bob Herbert to thank them for doing something right. Has Pavlov taught us nothing?

[e-mail]

Or to Herbert directly below:
http://topics.nytimes.com/...

It's much more fun to complain when someone does something wrong. I know.

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Update #3:
Today's LA Times:

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
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During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.