Media Captured; Scrutiny Lost
What’s troubling to anyone old-fashioned enough to care about standards in journalism is the news coverage in mainstream media. Forget the old notions of objectivity, fairness, thoroughness, and so on. The nastiest rumours on both sides haven’t been published, but the coverage has been slavishly on the side of “the one”.
But the press bias towards Obama doesn’t represent a simple revulsion for the Republican party. It was on display in the Democratic primaries with the persecution of Hillary Clinton. Worst of all, in the primaries, the press let the Obama campaign get away with continuous insinuations below the radar that the Clintons were race-baiters. Instead of exposing that absurd defamation for what it was – a nasty smear – the media sedulously propagated it.
Read the Full Story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/01/elections-obama-press-bias-mccain
So true.
On Sunday, “The Washington Post” ran a column by its ombudsman, Deborah Howell, which admitted that its coverage of the campaign was hopelessly unbalanced and skewed in favor of Barack Obama’s candidacy. Howell admitted that the newspaper did nothing to investigate Obama’s drug usage and his long term relationship with convicted felon Tony Rezko. While confession is good for the soul, the admissions came too late since the election was held on November 4th.
I doubt that the Congress will debate the wisdom of applying “the fairness doctrine” to their allies in the print media and television as opposed to merely censoring talk radio and demanding equal time on radio for leftists.
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