Although I sometimes see a story that makes me wonder, I have not generally been one to obsess over media biases against Republicans or the political right.
I recognize that the news media today is a business and that the basic rule is to go after any juicy scandal. My basic view has been that perhaps personal biases sometimes cause the reporter to lean to a Republican scandal versus a Democratic one but that if its a juicy story they will go after anyone.
However in the past couple of weeks I have seen some things that make me want to reexamine this position. The news media has taken some steps that seem to really step beyond just some minor slipups to some fairly serious bias against Senator McCain and the Republicans in general.
One of the biggest examples of this has been the reaction to Senator Obama’s trip to Iraq. All three network anchors (NBC/CBS/ABC) are along for the trip along with over 200 other reporters. They are covering every step of the trip as if it were a major Presidential summit.
Now I certainly understand that you need to cover this story, he is likely to be the next President and this is a major foreign policy trip. But do you really need to send all of the anchors ? The only times I’ve seen all of the anchors travel together in the past has been during events like 9/11, Katrina and the like. It doesn’t seem like this quite rises to that level.
In addition, we can look at what the media did when Senator McCain took a trip to Iraq (in fact he has taken several trips recently). The media reaction there was considerably understated. No anchors went with him, the stories didn’t even lead the news that night. In fact there was less coverage on all three networks combined than there has been on one network for Obama.
As I said above, I certainly understand the desire to cover Obama since he is the presumptive Democratic nominee. I even understand that perhaps he is a newer story. But the level of difference between the McCain coverage and the Obama coverage is well beyond what would seem reasonable.
For example, the New York Times recently carried an editorial on Iraq written by Senator Obama. Senator McCain wrote one in response and the Times refused to publish it. They contend it is because they don’t like the content of the article.
Now as far as I know they did not impose similar requirements on Obama and do we really believe that if the situation was reversed that they would reject Obama’s response editorial ?
Outside the election campaign there has also been some interesting content to the reporting on oil prices and the stock market.
Needless to say both issues are very important and I certainly understand that when oil prices surge or stock prices sag that it is very significant to the viewers. Perhaps all of the special reports and breaking news were a bit of overkill but I chalk that up to media hype rather than bias.
But when the trend was in the favor of the public (IE Oil prices dropping or Stock prices surging) then the media did not simply tone things down they reversed them drastically.
Oil price increases were reported by CNN as ‘Oil prices spike drastically’ while equal drops in prices were reported as ‘Slight reductions in price’ or by MSNBC as ‘Drops that are probably temporary’.
The same thing happened when the stock market prices improved. When the stocks slumped we had special reports about the plunging markets and the horrible effects it would have on retirement plans.
When they improved the reports focused on the fact that in the long term the market was ‘bound to’ slump (CNN) or on ABC we were told that the ‘slight gains’ did not erase the losses.
What ABC didn’t tell you is they were comparing one day worth of gains to one month worth of losses (unless you read the fine print at the bottom of the screen).
Now I can accept that some of this is simply the result of the media liking to report bad news because they think it is better for ratings. But when you combine all of the reports on all of the networks it becomes a question mark.
Although I am still not sold on a vast media conspiracy (either left or right), when you look specifically to the Obama/McCain race I think it is pretty hard at this point to deny that Saturday Night Live got it right. The media is ‘in the tank’ for Obama. I would like to see them prove me wrong but I doubt that they will.