Major networks show their bias for Obama

Nobody is compelled to watch network television coverage of the Barack Obama visit to the Middle East. The networks, however, made a business decision that the majority of their viewers did want to see it. Furthermore, if their representatives choose to wear, "Vote Obama" t-shirts, while covering the trip, that too would be a business decsion. The ill-conceived Fairness Doctrine was abolished in 1987, so consumers must exercize their own personal judgement in screening out fact from fiction. I would only be concerned if the networks enjoyed tax-exempt status...like churches.

Televison networks ceased to offer real news with the 24 hour news-cycle, cable, and the computer. ABC, CBS, and NBC offer the exact same evening "news" programming at the same time, with the same sponsors. Viewers can choose to watch Gibson, Couric, or Williams reading the exact same scripts. It doesn't really matter because none of it is fresh news. Most of us have heard it all, well before the 5:30 traditional news hour.

Interface: here's a radical suggestion - instead of inferring, why not get explicit? Why not point out what you're referring to, rather than snidely hiding behind inferences which you don't have to either enumerate or defend? So many of your posts follow this predictable pattern that it can only mean you are either intellectually lazy or you simply don't want to engage in a real discussion - instead, you engage in ad hominem attacks against whatever poster is posting a view you disagree with.

In your latest mini-post, you're insinuating that I've made an amazing number of factual misrepresentations - what are they? Enumerate them, please, so that I may answer. When you don't, of course, there can be no answer.

Is that how you really want to be perceived, as either being lazy or afraid to engage? I have no idea, which is why I'm asking.

p.s. Ross - congratulations, your posts are getting huge hits, far more than the usual madding crowd of liberal voices at the Star. Could this be an indication of why conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh are far, far more successful than any liberal counterparts, because their message resonates with far more people?

Amazing the number of factual misrepresentations in Grinchy's post, isn't it?

Guess it's a good thing for the country that such a misinformed individual is voting libertarian or not at all in November.

Of course they are in the tank for Obama. It doesn't matter to me, because hell would have to freeze over before I'd vote for such an inexperienced political hack with an inestimably high liberal voting record in the Senate, and friends like that frothy reverend who has retired to a million-dollar plus home in Chicago far out of reach of the hoi polloi, Rizzo in Chicago and that decades-old domestic terrorist. Oh yes, the same guy who changes his positions on major issues faster than Superman can change his underwear.

In case anyone doesn't know, I detest most liberal positions, because I think they are ignorant and wrong. With Obama, you get both in very strong doses, the mainstream media knows it and they're trying to counteract it by giving him unbalanced and favorable coverage that they would not give to a Republican candidate.

Those of you in denial over this, get over it - you're full of it. You can attack McCain the man and say he's too old and that's why he doesn't get the coverage, or some other BS reason, and you still cannot justify why none of those networks sending Obama anchors did for McCain - hey, I thought the liberals eschewed any politically incorrect references like age, handicap, race, sex, religion, etc, so why is this so acceptable? Oh - it's because McCain's a REPUBLICAN. Nice going, hypocrites.

p.s. Until a month ago, I was a lifelong registered Republican - I am now unaffiliated, like jenniferm, because McCain's ignorant positions on immigration and especially global warming pushed me out of the party because they don't identify with me any longer. I am a conservative, and the mainstream RNC is not, and I let them know it too. Having said that, unless the Democrats in the future can float a candidate I can accept over the Repub's, I will never again vote a Democrat into national office, based on their abysmal record which has resulted in this country being run almost into the ground.

This means that for the foreseeable future, my check mark will be by the Libertarian candidate's name, unless he is also a fruitcake, in which case I will not vote at all.

Only liberal fools would argue that the Mainstream Media are owned by anything but billionaire Marxists.

All this amounts to is complete proof of what anyone with an ounce of common sense has known ever since "Mr. Change" entered the campaign--mainstream media is in the tank for Obama. Hopefully, people will be able to see through the smoke, mirrors and you-know-what put out by both the mainstream media and "their" candidate when it comes time to vote!

Proud of it. Up until May 31, 2008, I considered myself a Dem. Now unaffiliated. I have friends and co-workers who are conservative. One thing we all agree on is the problems in this country are not being addressed by either candidate and the media is no help. No matter how much the media further the Obama's campaign, people are not buying it.

The networks are following Obama around because he's paying. Geesh.

It took Nick a while to write it, but corporate media dictates what gets reported. The death of journalism continues.

Obama’s voting record proves him to be one of the most liberal in the Senate as assessed by The Washington Post. He voted in line with Democrats 96% of the time.

I’m not commenting on whether this makes him good or bad, right or wrong but mainstream it is not.

By contrast, McCain voted with his party 88.3% of the time.

Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008

For my entire adult life, I have been a member of the Democratic Party, and a "card-carrying liberal." I'm a well-educated male, certainly not a racist, and I earn much more than the average professional.

But I'm NOT arrogant, above learning or admitting I don't know it all,and think it's pretty sleazy to attack the first U.S. President who was always extra-sensitive to the needs of African-Americans' -- and raised them up -- as a "racist," by taking his comments out of context. Heck, Bill wasn't even running for the job, if I recall correctly.

His wife, however, Sen. Hillary, Clinton, never managed to get a break from these same media savages throughout an historic campaign. The night after she won the W. Virgina primary by a WHOPPING 41 points, she didn't make the primetime news. Instead, her former rival, John Edwards -- a man who had VOWED not to endorse any candidate -- was carried LIVE by the networks, endorsing Barack Hussein Obama. Most folks never knew the magnitude of Sen. Clinton's sweeping victory --in a swing state.

And, thanks to Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid, evertime she came back and won another huge victory, she lost super-delegates to Obama.

Clinton may have hired a lousy campaign manager, and valued loyalty over ruthless, dishonest ability to win with a 50-state strategy ... she didn't have a plan for the caucus states. Anyone I've spoken with who went to a caucus, from KS to IA, said the process was more about bullying than democratically and orderly learning the will of the people. Be for Obama or leave, one friend was told. (The media was all to happy to report on Obama's "big wins" -- who really believes that Utah, for example, will go blue in November ... regardless of your party affiliation?)

Maybe we should have had the United Nations looking in on our elections. (Just read the comments by Obama supporters -- they are not open to compromise.)

If it wasn't so militant, just like the Chicago-style politics I grew to know during the eight years I lived in that city, I wouldn't feel so disenfranchised by my own party. Perhaps I wouldn't feel like everyone from Charlie Gibson to Keith Olbermann and Maureen Dowd were determined to pre-ordain the Democratic candidate AND the winner of the General Election. They are indifferent to the will of the people.

So much for "popularism." Obama has his messiah complex reinforeced everyday.

Funny -- things are so bad that this is supposed to be the Democrats' election to lose. We should have won in 2004. In a year when Democrats should be winning by a landslide, throughout the election season,we have instead the most arrogant, ill-informed, and blatently dishonest candidate the party has given us in decades. And Rasmussen Reports shows Obama is neck-and-neck with McCain.

Seems like a weak showing for a cult leader.

In reply to Duh: well, the free market sure isn't working for oil and energy in general. Its not working for global warming. Its not working in the mortgage market. I agree it worked for Fox - but that is because it is not a news channel. It is entertainment.

And as far as being a proud conservative. Well, all I can say is this must be the "pride" before the "fall". Pride can be a blinding trait - and being conservative is not a nationality. You, like many others fall into this trap of politicians that divides the country, principally between North and South, and along racial lines. This is not something to take any pride in. It is something that should be fixed.

I think politicians like Obama who really are neither right or left, or this or that ideology but rather intelligent, common sense people with a broad perspective coupled with a strong moral core are what America needs. It does not particularly need a liberal or a conservative ideology. There are virtues and vices to both those labels. The right place for America at any given time is a mixture of the best of both of them tailored to suit the times.

You know, it is Obama that is in fact the mainstream here; he might not look mainstream on the outside, but inside, he is mainstream to the core. And you know what, its what's inside that counts. This is what America really needs at this time... What an exciting opportunity! Wake up and smell the roses!

Ghod I hate when the loony right is right.
Please don't start up again about Rush Limbaugh. Now I have to do the Warthog Sky Dance all over to remind the world that he's an uneducated pill-head draft dodger who can't maintain a relationship with an adult woman but who can get caught with the remainder of a bottle of Viagra coming home from the sex vacation capital of the Caribbean. Oh--and his father, grandfather, brother, cousin, and uncle are all lawyers.
There's something like twenty million Rushpuppets out there who sit at his feet, begging to be "entertained" by this obese cretin, on the economy, on political history, on moral issues, and on the topic of slimeball ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Next on Fox: Ted Kennedy on sobriety, Bill Clinton on the importance of marital fidelity, and Bill Richardson on a comprehensive physical fitness program.

Oh--civility. "Cindy Sheehan lost her son. Get over it. We all lose things."

You might be wise to spend a little more time reading some of those books that you get your opinions from. It's pilonidal cyst ....not pilonodal

To suggest that the big 3 are "in the tank" for Obama, though clearly true, is not the issue of concern to me.

The duplicitous idiot that the dems have running the house is clearly committed to instituting that incredibly inappropriately named "fairness doctrine" legislation. The Democrat party is not about "fair", they are about control.

They are unwilling to even acknowledge that the the mainstream favors them, all the while whining that the lack of balance on radio is so unfair.

Leave it alone. The free market works. The proof of that is the success of Fox News. They immediately captured a huge market share because they offered something other than left biased presentations. They were the first to do so in television.

They were successful with civility. The real reason that air america failed so miserably ( listened to them alot for 2 months 2 years ago) was that they displayed no civility....not any.

They were ranters and, much like Olbermann, never allowed opposing perspectives to be heard. They were rude and displayed no respect for anyone or anything that did not agree with their view. They did not either entertain very well nor engage the opposition.... 2 things that Mr Limbaugh does so very well. He is a proud conservative. I do not hear anybody on the left declare themselves proudly to be liberal.......even that bastion of liberal thinkers at the publicly funded PBS actually present themselves as centrists!!

Why please are the new liberals incapable of engaging with civility. They are all as insulting to civility as Hannity is on the right.

We’re talking about a news broadcast here not the opinion page. The news division is not supposed to be driven by “sexy” or “en vogue” or ratings but rather driven to inform the people in a neutral fashion. It is certainly not driven by profit since the news departments at the three networks routinely lose huge amounts of money.

In a presidential election year it is unacceptable that one candidate should receive so much more favorable attention than the other. Especially if the one candidate has so much in his favor to begin with as you suggest Obama has.

By the way; I thought Obama was the guy who was supposed to transcend race. If this is true then why does the fact that he’s the first African-American frontrunner deserve extra notoriety? You remind me twice that he’s African-American. I don’t think the color of his skin would have a thing to do with how good of a president he would make.

Back in January, when McCain was somewhat of a media darling, (remember even The Star endorsed him on the Republican side) I predicted on this blog that the media would turn on him once he had secured the nomination. It appears I was correct.

Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/07/17/about-that-obama-trip.aspx

"But there's a big difference between McCain's trip and the one Obama will embark on next week to Europe and the Middle East. In what could be interpreted now as a possible strategic misstep, the McCain campaign chose not to take reporters along for the ride, forcing media outlets who wanted to cover the newly elected GOP nominee to travel on their own without any guarantee of getting anywhere near the senator. The small group of scribes who made the trek (Newsweek chose not to) faced a logistical nightmare, from arranging last-minute foreign visas to struggling to keep up with McCain as they flew commercially from stop to stop. (McCain traveled by a military aircraft.) In contrast, the Obama campaign is inviting reporters on its tour, handling all the logistics--including transportation--for what will certainly be a much larger press corps than usual."

Yeah, they're totally out of control. Why would they think that the first African American candidate frontrunner's visit to the Middle East is more newsworthy than an old man stumbling through a region he doesn't understand? To say that political affilition is the only factor involved, or really to attempt to prove that it is a factor at all, ignores the complexity of the isssue and fails to understand the concept of media as a business.

Let's see...Obama is a relatively young guy, the first ever African American frontrunner, it's his first trip to the Middle East for diplomatic talks, he appeals to youth in greater numbers than MCCain, his speechs are energetic as well as impassioned and he's "en vogue" at the moment. He is the "new" in a society that hates the "old." What do you think would garner higher ratings? McCain or Obama in the Middle East? You're right that it's unfair, but it's not solely because of a liberal bias, if any political bias at all. The bias here is a large-scale corporate bias. It is profit-driven, not politically driven. As long as media is a business, the big media companies will concentrate on what sells. Sorry, McCain just isn't that sexy. If he was, he would be the media darling--regardless of party affilition.

That's a little harsh, Chalveyob. Balano's been responsible for considerable "idiotic drivel" in the past, but this doesn't rise to the level of his best.

What a completely Moronic post, thank you, we are all dumber after having to read your idiotic drivel!

One slight correction to your intelligent, well-articulated column: Democrats don't always seem to be complaining about talk radio being so conservative. Democrats are simply much more likely to not get their opinions from AM radio. Democrats frequently own 'televisions,' and read 'books.'

The reason McCain is less likely to get coverage is that he does stupid things like put on a flak jacket and walk around guarded by an armored division yelping about how safe it is in the streets of Bagdad. Obama, having a much better grasp of the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite, is a whole lot safer to hang out with.