Just Like The Kremlin?

Hey, don't blame me, I'm just channeling 'responsible centrist journalists'.

In addition, Obama has benefited from his ability to minimize internal drama and maximize secrecy — and thus to starve feed the press’ bias for palace intrigue.

John Harris and Jim VandeHei write at The Politico on "Why McCain Is Getting Hosed In The Press."  It's a collection of eyebrow-raising assertions and illogical conclusions that seem specifically designed to deflect the hard-earned criticism of the type demonstrated by Orson Scott Card a short time ago.  For example:

And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.

Wait, it get's better.

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

That McCain's campaign is "going quite poorly" is for the press a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Many of the stories trumpeted to tear down the McCain-Palin effort were manufactured.  The $150,000 $50,000 wardrobe.  The negative ad tag (which, in this story, the reporters even admit was as true of Obama as McCain).  The "lied in campaign ads" accusation, made a cause celebre only for one party.  The rectal exam the NY Times gave Cindy McCain.  The droves of reporters and lawyers dropped into Alaska to "dig up dirt" on the governor.  Finding racism in nearly every utterance of the McCain campaign, a tactic by which the press tells the campaign to SHUT UP!.  And the list goes on.  It's easy to say - now - that the McCain campaign is "going poorly" when you've pushed it into a grave yourselves and shoveled as much dirt onto it as the Obama campaign and its subsidiaries can give you. 

Responsible editors would be foolish not to ask themselves the bias question, especially in the closing days of an election.

But, having asked it, our sincere answer is that of the factors driving coverage of this election — and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama — ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil.

The main reason is that for most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy.

You know, I say the same thing about myself.  Here at Joust The Facts we deal with facts.  We analyze them, and use them to buttress our positions.  Logic and thoughtful consideration are valued.  We don't resort to name calling, or to invective or ad hominem attacks.

But I'll bet Harris & VandeHei wouldn't say it about me.

Let's look at a list of topics glossed over and grossly under- or un-reported by the media.  William Ayers.  Jeremiah Wright.  Tony Rezko. (Note that that link is from January, stating that the association of Rezko and Obama "raises questions."  ABC didn't see fit to look into those questions further.)  Marxist connections.  The missing Columbia years.  Redistribution of wealth.  Unaffordable promises.  Joe Biden's foreign policy fantasy world.  Talks "without preconditions."  ACORN and fraudulent (and illegal) voter registrations.  Illegal voting in Ohio.  Obama's ACORN ties.  Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Fannie Mae and the real source of the financial crisis.  Joe Biden's "tested" comments, which even Dan Rather noted would be trumpeted much more widely had Gov. Palin made them about McCain.  Oh, and blackballing any adversarial press.

There was, of course, some reporting on these items.  Stories that were written by larger media outlets served more to obfuscate and absolve than to illuminate and hold accountable.  And then, poof, they were gone.  For a story to get penetration in the minds of the electorate requires multiple visits, with new information, and additional digging.  An equally adversarial press would have done this.

Instead, when any of these stories that were potentially damaging to Obama were dusted off, they were trotted out once, and then returned to the closet until Nov. 5.  Those that were more probing, more informative, were not written by outfits like the Washington Post and NY Times, which notably wrote of William Ayers that he and Obama briefly "crossed paths."  Even CNN found that they did much more than that - but only as a fact check of two earlier stories.  A current example of squelching the story is the LA Times withholding a

There are headlines, and then there are polls.  The screaming attention-getting headlines have been negative for McCain, sometimes even on a story that isn't all that negative.  A story that is negative for Obama usually carries a much more 'nuanced' headline.  Many don't read the whole story, they get their news from the headline.  The polls are used to influence the 3-5% of the electorate who simply want to say they voted for the winner.  So, write lots of stories about the inevitability of the outcome and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy with a 6-10 point swing.  Call it the Asch effect.

Finally, there is the bias in the tendency of these political reporters to accept at face value spin from Obama and his campaign team as honest truth while not accepting the same from the McCain campaign.  A case in point can be found here.

Exit question:  Most of the commentators that have accused McCain's ad of lying about this Illinois bill have used Senator Obama's denial itself as the refutation, as the NY Times does here.  I assume that Mr. McCain will be allowed to have his word as the final say in controversies regarding his positions, no?

At this point  I'm willing to second the title of Mr. Card's piece.  Will the last honest journalist please turn on the lights?

*A great source on this topic can be found at Zombietime, where he's a bit more optimistic for McCain than is probably warranted, but you can find out more about that Asch effect.

10/28/08 2310: Objective journalism: loser.  Wherein you find out about "accountability journalism."