Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, November 08, 2008 1:40:04 PM
We have all complained about the pro-Obama tilt in this election
cycle. News media consistently gave John McCain much harsher treatment
while refusing to perform the same kind of investigative journalism on
Barack Obama, whose thin track record and Chicago Machine background
should have given reporters enough red flags for a bullfighting
league. Instead, the media gave Obama the elevator and McCain the
shaft.
One major media outlet agrees … now that the election is over (via Byron York at The Corner)
Ombud Deborah Howell’s column goes on to justify or at least rationalize the imbalance:
Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages
outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and
editors — like most of the national news media — found the candidacy of
Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy
and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than
Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career
in politics.
So that must mean they absolutely adored Sarah Palin and gave her the same benefit of the doubt, right? Er, no:
When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president,
reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought
The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden.
They are right; it was a serious omission.
The hell with Joe Biden. Howell never answers the real issue here —
why did the Post, and the rest of the national media, go on the attack
with Sarah Palin and not with Barack Obama? The two candidates had a
similar amount of time in politics, and Palin had more executive
experience than Obama. Obama ran for the top job, while Palin ran for
VP. And yet the national media parachuted dozens of reporters into
Wasilla and Juneau looking for dirt and scandal, coming up with a
tanning bed in the governor’s mansion (which Palin bought herself) and
the Troopergate story that turned out to be a nothingburger and was
already known prior to her nomination.
Where were the Post reporters doing the same thing in Chicago? Why
didn’t the Post want to look at the files of the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge, Barack Obama’s only executive experience prior to
his run for the presidency? The media never bothered to make a
hundredth of the effort on Obama that they did with Palin, and they had
two years to do it.
That’s the issue Howell should have addressed in her
column. We already know that the Post gave imbalanced coverage of
Obama and McCain, as did most of the rest of the media. And now Howell
gives the mea culpa in her first column after Election Day,
when it’s far too late to do anything about it. Where was Howell
during the last three months? Why wait until the election is over to
speak up? That’s an answer in itself.