A Conservative Viewpoint - Obama Media Bias Was “Rampant”

Article by Bob Steinburg
- Edenton, North Carolina: Cradle of the Colony

During the months and weeks leading up to the presidential election, it was obvious to me and others that the press was in bed with Barack Obama. The mainstream media was in denial. My editor thought I was hallucinating and some friends thought my perceptions seriously missed the mark.

It now seems that some in the media admit that throughout the campaign concerns about bias toward Barack Obama were not without merit. Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said on November 9th there was no doubt news coverage there showed rampant evidence of bias.

“The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13.” Negative pieces heavily featured McCain over Barack Obama, she said.

Adds Howell: “Stories and photos about Obama 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.”

Time Magazine, not exactly a conservative news outlet, admitted being biased toward Barack Obama. Mark Halperin, the magazine’s political analyst, called the media’s performance during the campaign “disgusting.” He added: “It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.”

Halperin also points to bias at the New York Times. He said they gave Michelle Obama the red-carpet treatment throughout the campaign while viciously trashing Cindy McCain.

Best - selling author David Limbaugh recently noted: “Never has media bias been clearer than in the 2008 presidential election, during which they are covering up rather than covering Barack Obama’s shady past and alliances, his deep-knee involvement in corrupt practices threatening the very core of our democratic system, and his many policy misrepresentations.”

And if anyone is looking for further examples of media-bias one doesn’t have to look very far- just examine the excessive and absolutely ridiculous coverage of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, while ignoring the excess of money spent on the million-dollar Greek Coliseum backdrop for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver.

Pollster John Zogby surveyed 512 Barack Obama supporters after the election to see if media bias had any affect in this year’s presidential race. The 12 – question multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Barack Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden.

• 57.4 percent did not know which party controlled Congress.
• 71.8 percent did not know Joe Biden quit a previous campaign for plagiarism.
• 82.6 percent could not correctly say Obama won his first election by getting his opponents kicked off the ballot.
• 88.4 percent did not know that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket.
• 56.1 percent could not correctly say that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.
• 47 percent did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as president.

And yet:

• only 13.7 percent of these same voters failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 on clothes

• only 6.2 percent failed to identify Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter

• And 86.9 percent thought that Palin actually said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Saturday Night Lives Tina Fey, parodying Palin.

Perhaps if voters for McCain were polled with these same questions there would be similar responses from some of them. That’s not the point here. What is the point is that the mainstream media plays a significant role in shaping our opinions. The responses clearly indicate just what was being reported by the media in this year’s presidential campaign, and what wasn’t being reported.

So, who is accountable for the “propaganda” that appears as news in many mainstream media outlets? The answer would have to be editors. They are ultimately responsible for the overall content of a book, magazine, newspaper or broadcast reporting. And many of these editors are not doing their jobs. They sift through the news to determine what fits their ideology or agenda, instead of giving their readers, listeners and viewers a balanced news product.

The Internet is stealing significant chunks of readers from newspapers that would rather maintain their political bias than to report the news evenly and fairly. Newspapers are doing their stockholders a disservice, but more importantly their readers and their country.

When former CBS news anchor Dan Rather thinks the media was biased in this year’s election, we should stand up and take note. Rather had to step down from his job at CBS because folks there thought he fabricated the facts in his `04 story about President George W. Bush’s National Guard service and the purported preferential treatment Bush was receiving as a guardsman. When CBS could not authenticate the documents that Rather used to substantiate his story, it became clear to most that this was certainly not journalism.

A free press is essential to a democracy. It is protected by the United States Constitution specifically because our founding fathers knew the importance of having the citizenry “fully” informed. The results of this year’s presidential election may have been different had most in the media done their jobs. Perhaps not, but because of their journalistic negligence, we’ll never know for certain.

To understand the coming disaster in America you really do not need to go any further than reading the first sentence in this last paragraph and honestly recognizing the truth we currently face. We no longer have a free press. We have a press that is dedicated to glorifying socialism and the Utopia it proclaims, ignoring all failures of this nightmare system. Our press has voluntarily chosen slavery for our people.

After socialism starts to fail here, a part of the press will probably try and change sides and criticize government. It will be at that point that the suppression of free speech and a free press will prove that our MSM did not just sell the average citizen into slavery, but sold the fourth estate into slavery as well.