Hallmark 1 – Diversions at moments when Obama would steal the limelight (Berlin-Celebrity, Post DNC Analysis-Palin – who was a campaign decision, not a governing decision)

Hallmark 2 – Attacking the media establishment to strike at the foundations of truth in societty…creating an environment of I say versus he says. This is a very systematic tactic aimed at inoculating his deceitful and often debunked statements and advertising.

Hallmark 3 – With doubts he raised about media credibility hanging in the air, the McCain campaign is now able to launch salvos of heavily repeated distortions and lies through statements and ads. Messages are repeated often, and with impunity….the more the message is used, the better retention of those messages will result. His consistently debunked lies about Obama's tax plans is one example. In a recent survey, almot half of americans still misinformed Obama will raise taxes for those earning less than 250,000. The fact that such a critical detail in the electorate's choice for presidency is misrepresented to such a grand scale is frightening.

This recent charge that the media is once again biased is merely a ploy at innoculating the next round of misrepresented advertising and dishonest statements. What's surprising is, his rocking of confidence in news organizations is working…so people keep believing everything he is saying…One has to question why Senator McCain has to resort to such a grand scale of manipulation to win. If he puts the coountry first, why does he think lying to the electorate is ok? What happened to common decency?

often any criticism of one's favorite right-winger is taken as an 'obvious' “liberal bias”. the tenor of the discourse has moved so far right since ann coulter (there is, indeed, a method to her brand of madness) that anyone further left than, say, george will, is considered “in the tank” for the “liberal media”.

and when it comes down to it, i tend to take issue with most things DLS says. they tend to needlessly stir the pot, rather than adding anything to it.

hmm. AustinRoth appointed himself shaun's personal troll. maybe DLS needs one too? that derserves some consideration….

I take issue with the whole “liberal media” Nixonian diatribe. If lumping in all media as”liberally biased” then you have to add O'Reilly, Beck, Savage, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter et al. Since they are also part of the media as well.
Not to mention Fournier being in the tank for conservatives. So, your eponym is no hydrologically sound.

Sweeping generalizations just paints oneself into a corner. Just add pointy hat.

The same is true for Hollywood and other entertainment venues (musicians), where “social consciousness” (left-wing play-pan politics) is not merely fashionable, but de rigeur.

I fully agree. However, as you might have read, comedians are having a VERY hard time poking fun at Obama.

The best political comedy I have ever seen was a puppet show in the UK called “Spitting Image”. It was a massive hit through the Thatcher and Major years, and was wonderful, vicious and brilliant.

And, as you say, non-partisan in savaging everyone from the Queen Mum on down.

Hahahahaha…yes, what you snark is very true.

McCain himself is a creature of the media . . . that covered his ass and his gaffes in 2000. I suspect, as you imply, part of McCain's irritation is that he is no longer getting the free ride he got against Bush.

But that is the thing. Conservatives only get cover when they are the go-to boys for hammering other conservatives. Otherwise, it is open season.

What you say ambiguously as the “some media claiming him as an advisor” was actually the Washington Post.

And the McCain ad is a DIRECT QUOTE from the Washington Post's profile of Raines.

From the ad: “Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for “advice on mortgage and housing policy.”

From the Post: Raines had “taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

These were the Washington Post's OWN WORDS. A direct quote, Mary.

McCain did not “exaggerate wildly” in making a Raines a “close adviser”. In fact, the ad never mentions “close adviser” (That is an exaggeration of the WashPost FactChecker .

Mary . . . they are criticizing McCain for exaggerating by directly quoting The Post . . . based upon their subsequent clarifications of their story (which is a major shift in emphasis, to the point of being a totally different story . . . radically downplaying Raines' role and his advice . . .clearly Raines' got the memo from the Obama campaign).

McCain quoted the Post accurately.

The Post now calls this a “wild exaggeration”. . . based on new reporting done AFTER the ad was made.

But these are the Post's EXACT WORDS!

This is a minor example of an old story for conservatives. Usually bias is very hard to prove (merely a “matter of interpretation” . . . just because 98% of the employees of the BBC vote Labour, or of the NYT vote Democratic, does not mean they are biased. They are professionals…and that is an outrageous smear.)

But sometimes . . . as in the Post criticizing McCain for accurately quoting The Post . . .the bias becomes surreal.

Funny, I always got the impression that they were for Hillary.
:shrug: Comedy should poke fun at all sides- otherwise you end up like that not very funny Half Hour News show. Comedy is non partisan. Comedy is pain.

Who is ready to lead on Day 1 – based on campaign performance it is certainly NOT McCain or his team.

Piss off the media long enough and they will circle the wagons. Blame them for doing their jobs, and then when they aren't blame them for that too.

Lies and hypocrisy- is the benchmark of the McPalin campaign. Not issues, transparency or reform.

He forgets the boy who cried wolf got eaten.

Tanning bed stuff? Not a major item in the NY Times. I checked. There's a few comments in blogs, dismissive comments in opinion pieces (saying that this is a trivial issue), and that's about it.

Does Obama get less criticism than McCain? Debateable. Obama gets more concern trolling? “Race? Race race race trust white people race? Race, white people. Trusty trustingness.”

Obama has had a hell of a lot more column inches about Wright than McCain has had about Hagee. There's a difference, you say? An endorsement versus being part of a congregation for 20 years? Fair enough.

So now that I think we agree that absolute parity is meaningless, let's go back to the increased negative attention McCain has received from the NY Times and other papers. He's gotten it by not just lying in his ads and on the stump, but by being absolutely brazen about it.

The Raines ad was on the far edge of typical-pol-lying, in that McCain didn't just go after someone who, yes, had some media claiming him as an advisor, but once the Washington Post fact-checked itself, McCain didn't back down.

BTW, they didn't claim that McCain was lying. They said he stretched the truth and he got only a measly two Pinocchios. From their conclusion:

“The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on “housing and mortgage policy.” If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself — and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release.”

So they look at the original three WP mentions, clarify their scope (no, they don't now claim a TOTALLY different story), and slap McCain on the wrist for exaggerating in an emotion-laden ad. Sorry, McCain deserved this, just as Obama deserved some of his Pinocchios for similar stretching.

It was a fair question. This points, in fact, to a classic example of the bias – I detailed in brief – that you generally ignore.

This goes beyond one question . . . to the general high level of criticism of the McCain-Palin campaign (Palin bought a tanning bed from her own money! Shocking!) to the low level of criticism of the Obama campaign.

Just on your mortgage issue.

Franklin Raines – the Fannie Mae CEO – was cited by the Washington Post as an advisor to Sen. Obama on mortage issues.

When the McCain team mentioned this in an ad – explicitly citing the Washinton Post as a source, it was declared – bizarrely, by a commentator at the Washington Post (in total schizo mode) – to be a lie.

Read the piece I link below. It is surreally schizo. The Washington Post FactChecker quotes the original Washington Post profile of Raines as saying Raines had “taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

So the McCain ad quoted these words exactly.

Obama complained.

Then the Washington Post FactChecker declared the McCain ad to be a stretch.

Why? Because he checked with the original reporter, who NOW says a TOTALLY different story of what Raines told her of his relationship with Obama.

And the Washinton Post declares McCain to be lying . . . because the Washington Post reporter has now changed her memory of the events!

Bias? Bad reporting? Whatever you want to call it.

How can the Post denounce McCain as lying for accurately quoting the Post's own reporting? Seriously.

The McCain team are pissed at the media . . . and with good reason! (Don't even mention Andrew Sullivan's demands for Palin's amnio tests to prove conclusively that Baby Trig is hers!)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2...

Schmidt could have answered the question better. But that does not

Let's rewind to just before Schmidt's display of pique^2: the NYT asked him about McCain campaign manager's Rick Davis' $30,000/month work on behalf of a mortgage industry advocacy group. Instead of answering the question — which had nothing to do with offering Obama bonbons or a pillow — he blustered.

All the talk in the world about how easy a ride Obama's received has nothing to do with the real situation: the McCain campaign couldn't answer a fair and relevant question about lobbying for financial institutions after several days of spin on their part trying to blame this financial crisis on Obama.

In the United Kingdom, conservatives have long complained about the left, pro-Labour bias of the BBC – the state-owned and supported broadcaster.

Like the folks Joe cites re. the US media, the BBC governors dismissed this as sour grapes for years. Occasional, particularly glaring examples, were treated as unfortunate “one-offs”.
One notorious example was, when Blair's New Labour was elected in the 1990s after years of Conservative rule, an on-air BBC anchor noted how champagne was running in the halls at the BBC.
Another was, in the days immediately after 9-11, the BBC invited the US ambassador on to face questions from an audience of average Britons. The audience was, in fact, a selected group of anti-American activists…who subjected the ambassador to vicious attack after vicious attack on the US (The BBC later apologized for this incident).

But the best example was when Facebook took off last year. It was hugely popular at the BBC, with the BBC network having over ten thousand members. And in the Profile slot for political affiliation . . . the thousands of BBC employees – almost universally – chose Left or Very Left.

The BBC governors blew a gasket . . . and immediately ordered all BBC employees to remove signs of their political affliliation from Facebook.

Google the story. It is hilarious.

The BBC . . . like the US media . . . must always “appear” to be unbiased and politically objective!

In the MSM's collective navel-gazing in the period following, there was general agreement that – Yes, they had been very support of Obama, and correspondingly critical of Clinton.

That happened, folks. What Schmidt is saying here — lacking the style of Tina Fey — is pretty much the same thing.

Take off your partisan hats for a moment, and be honest.

I would never say that Fox News is unbiased. Most folks here would agree with me.
I would never say that the New York Times is unbiased. Shock and outrage!

Look, with all due respect, for Joe or anyone else to pretend that the New York Times is not a Democratic paper is absurd.

(1) The last time the New York Times endorsed a Republican for president was 1956!

(2) I ask anyone reading to review the New York Times' editorials for the day after the presidential election/inauguration since 1980. This is what you will find:
Whenever a Republican is elected the New York Times declares there GOP President has “no mandate” . . . whenever a Democrat is elected . . . there is a “sweeping mandate”.
Incredibly, when Reagan won every state but one in 1984, in the view of the New York TImes editors he had no mandate, while when Clinton won with a bare plurality against Bush and Perot, it was a stunning mandate for change.

(3) Note, for example, the absolute refusal by Keller at the NYT to look into Edwards' affair when Edwards was running for President.
In contrast, Keller found it a legitimate story to allege McCain extramarital affair with a lobbyist on the NYT's front page.

The New York Times is a liberal paper. Contrary to what Keller says, they do NOT probe those whom they agree with. The many probing articles of Senator Obama's past that are cited as proof of their even-handedness are celebrations of Obama.

To find a positive article on McCain you would have to go back years.

The New York Times has, of course, every right to be a liberal paper.
But come on . . . for anyone to say it is not pro-Democratic in its editorial and reporting is absurd.

It is like saying Fox News is supportive of the Democrats.