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The Case of CH2M HILL: $2 Billion in Crony Stimulation by Rusty Weiss
The Truth about George Soros by AIM Staff
Lifting the Veil on WikiLeaks by AIM Staff
The Truth about Al-Jazeera English by Cliff Kincaid
Reaganomics and Obamanomics in the Media and in Reality by Malcolm A. Kline, Don Irvine and Spencer Irvine
How State Budget Battles Could Mean More Criminals Back on the Streets by Michael Tremoglie
Radical Muslims, Environmentalists and the Green Jihad by Mark Musser
Russian-Backed Propaganda Networks Claim Obama is a CIA Agent by Cliff Kincaid
Media Conceal True Nature of Flash Mob Racial Violence by John T. Bennett
NBC’s Mitchell Should Resign Over Telling Gaddafi’s Lies (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) by Cliff Kincaid
CASA de Maryland: The Illegals’ ACORN by James Simpson
Special Report
The Newswire
Take AIM Podcast
Syndicated columnist Bonnie Erbe chimes in with her views on the media’s coverage of Obama and McCain.
When the media start backing away from supporting a candidate or a cause, read it as a sign the media elite understand the public is seeing through the media’s neutrality ruse.
MSNBC’s coverage of Sen. Barack Obama’s trip abroad streamed online shows one commentator waxing poetic about the senator’s rave visuals. Another equally valid interpretation of the video of Obama shooting hoops with the troops is that it made him look less credible as a world leader, not more. A second commentator in the segment takes a deep breath, steps back and states that the Obama campaign has manipulated media coverage during this trip to an extent not witnessed in a long career of covering presidential campaigns. And that’s saying something.
So is the fact the much-venerated New York Times Op-Ed page rejected an opinion piece submitted to the paper by Sen. John McCain late last week. The topic: the Iraq war. The McCain campaign released the rejection e-mail from Times Op-Ed Editor David Shipley, explaining the rejection as follows:
McCain’s article would have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory “with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”
While the Times has published at least seven pieces by McCain since 1996, and will reconsider the one he submitted last week if it is revised, it seems strange the paper would seek such revisions from a presidential candidate. Whether the Times required similar changes of Obama, whose opinion piece the paper published earlier, is unknown.
What is known is Obama has graced the covers of six editions of Newsweek in the past year versus two for McCain. What is known is that Obama has been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine twice in the past year (McCain on the cover of Rolling Stone? Unthinkable!) The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s weekly summary of media coverage for the week ending July 20th reported the following:
“Last week, Obama was a significant presence in 83 percent of campaign stories studied, vs. McCain in 52 percent. (To be a significant presence in a story, 25 percent of the story must be about that person.)”
Are the media, overall, in love with Obama? You betcha. Is he getting a pass in terms of negative media critiques? You betcha. Is that fair? Life is not fair, as we all know. But the only thing fair about the media’s portrayal of the two presumptive party presidential nominees is that media bias may be starting to backfire.
Erbe is right that life isn’t fair, but the media has a duty to report the news and not their opinion and in this case they have lost their way as they have fallen head over heels for Obama.
Also while Erbe claims to have no favorite in the race and that she isn’t a political partisan she has written before that she isn’t a Republican either.
Read the rest of her column.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
3 Comments for Fair or Not The Media Favors Obama
The problem here is not fairness or equilibrium.
The real problem is the intrinsic qualities of each candidate.
When the mainstream media backs Obama, there is glossing over, omission and relativization.
When the same media covers McCain, there is demand for explanation, demand for evidence and escrutinity.
And there is criticism.
This will make the old senator run, research, negotiate, harder, further and longer.
While the young senator, will schmoose, flatter, and hobnob with Hollywood people.
We have seen this before. The mainstream media will take the democratic victory at election for granted while the real America will vote for the republicans.
Slinky-
could you post your source for the information you cited?
“Yet this isn’t enough, that they own the news in print, most of TV, and NPR”
WHO owns all of that?
Most people are at least given the proof that our media are corrupt. The pretense is all off, and the news you see and hear is what they choose to feed you.
I saw this morning that in financial disclosures to the candidates, the sources identified as being in the media have donated to Obama 100:1 vs. McCain.
Yet this isn’t enough, that they own the news in print, most of TV, and NPR. Next they want to wipe out AM talk radio, the conservative voice that has fluorished in response to the liberal lock on the MSM.
Heaven help us.