FYI: The top vid is a recent McCain campaign ad, while the bottom is a rebuttal from Media Matters. Check ‘em both before reading further.

Lola Adesioye at The Guardian’s Comment is Free nails it:

Since John McCain has lambasted Barack Obama for never having visited Iraq and his lack of foreign experience, it was rather amusing to hear him complaining last week that media coverage of Obama’s headline-grabbing trip to Europe, Iraq and the Middle East – covered extensively by both US and foreign journalists, including a travelling cohort of some 40 American correspondents and anchors from the major news networks – was evidence of pro-Obama media bias.

McCain is not the only one to believe that the media is on Obama’s side. According to a Rasmussen poll carried out last week, 49% of voters – up from 44% a month ago – believe that the media will try to get as much coverage for Obama as possible. This is compared to 14% who believe that journalists will do the same for McCain. Republicans, unsurprisingly, are the most critical of the media: 78% believe that it is pro-Obama, and only 10% consider the news coverage to be unbiased. [...]

Nobody can deny that Obama gets a lot of media attention. The groundbreaking and historical nature of his campaign – including his race, the amount of money he has raised and his appeal among young voters – has certainly made him an object of fascination. In June, the Pew Research Centre reported that not only has Obama “consistently been the most visible presidential candidate in the eyes of the public” since the major primaries on Super Tuesday, but that he has “generally dominated the news cycle”. Is that, however, evidence of what McCain calls the media’s “Obama love”? Or is it simply that Obama’s activities – speeches on patriotism, faith, race and his first-time overseas visit – are simply very newsworthy? [...]

McCain’s claim of media bias assumes that all coverage of Obama is and has been positive. This is clearly not true. Rumours, gossip and false information about Obama have also been covered by the media. Between March 13 and April 12, the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index noted that rumours that Obama is an unpatriotic Muslim took up 0.4% of media coverage. This jumped to 3.8% in June – almost a 10-fold increase.

Many of the issues that have had Obama on the defensive – such as the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his religion, patriotism and questions about his wife’s allegiance to America – have all been led by the media. Furthermore, these controversial topics have been the ones that have registered most deeply with voters. Research shows that “of nearly 40 campaign events that have been measured, Obama’s relationship with his former pastor Rev Jeremiah Wright remains the most widely heard about campaign story.”

While Obama is continually questioned, it seems to be accepted that McCain is who he says he is. As we’ve seen, legitimate questions about whether or not McCain’s military service qualifies him to be president are met with disdain. McCain has changed his position on a number of key issues, yet his flip-flopping has gone relatively unreported by the media. Jack Cafferty, a CNN anchor, is among a small number of journalists to have mentioned it. “If John McCain doesn’t stop changing his position on the issues”, he has said, “he threatens to make John Kerry look like an amateur.”

This particular point bears repeating: While Obama is continually questioned, it seems to be accepted that McCain is who he says he is. As evidenced by their repeated use of the term “maverick” in reference to McCain. While 2000 McCain may indeed have been a “maverick” inasmuch as he wasn’t afraid to take positions contrary to his party’s platform, 2008 McCain? Well, not so much. He’s flip-flopped on everything from immigration reform to whether he thinks Falwell, Robertson & Co. are indeed “agents of intolerance.” And that’s not to say that I think Obama’s a “straight talker,” either; remember, I’m voting for McKinney. McCain and Obama each spew bullshit out of both sides of their mouths. (They are, after all, politicians. It would be shocking if they didn’t.)

It’s not a question of whether the mainstream media is biased in favor of Obama or McCain; rather, they’re biased in favor of them both, just in different ways. They’ve bought into the Obama-as-Messiah meme as well as that of McCain the Maverick. While they sometimes ignore McCain, that’s because he’s about as exciting as Garrison Keillor on downers; on the flip side, much of Obama’s coverage focuses on non-issues and panders to racists, xenophobes, Christian fundamentalists, and misogynists (i.e., in the msm’s coverage of wife Michelle).

If you happen to be a cranky feminist like moi, you might say that the media’s biased in favor of anything with a penis and, on a more global level, they’re simply just a bunch of incompetent, self-important fanboy fuckwits.

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Tagged: 2008 elections john mccain barack obama msm mainstream media media matters video politics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under indecision '08. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.