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Two Views On Pro-Obama Bias In The Media
The Atlantic Politics Channel — ... a general proposition I think there's an additional explanation why the press has been burrowing deeper into the Obama camp: post-election access. This is certainly not news to you, but most of the reporters covering these campaigns want to be rewarded with White House correspondent jobs. Others just want access to the next administration. Many figure that ripping into the Obama campaign now would be like wounding the king without killing him. And VandeHarris write -- and you gotta love the Drudge headline: "Don't blame us for the bias; McCain campaign ...

Matt Lewis: Politico Admits McCain is Getting Hosed in the Press (They Say He Deserves It)...
Townhall.com Blog's TownHall Blog — Politico admits hating McCain, but says that doesn't make them biased (They say McCain objectively sucks, and they're just reporting on it). "OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico. 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 — ...

From Socialist... to Soviet?
Taylor Marsh — ... Lots of stories are starting to pop about the press beginning its soul searching on the coverage. Politico has a long piece today on it, as did others recently. ...

"Why McCain is getting hosed in the press."
Althouse — According to Politico, it's not that journalists simply want Obama to win. Politico says journalists are actually pretty good at adhering to "professional obligations," they aren't big ideologues, and they don't even like Obama personally. (They "find him a distant and undefined figure.") They used to love McCain, because of "his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics," but they've fallen out of love, not because they want him to lose, but because he's not accessible anymore: ...

Politico Acknowledges Media Favor Obama, But 'Ideological Favoritism' Is 'Nil'
NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias — ... John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei were important players on The Washington Post’s political team when they left to start The Politico newspaper and website. But they don’t think that most "mainstream" reporters are liberals or partisans. Now they’ve written an article provocatively titled "Why McCain Is Getting Hosed by the Press," noting their own mothers think the media’s in the tank for Obama. ...

Politico.com explains anti-McCain bias in the media
Rathergate.com — It’s because they’re nuts, and I mean certifiable. John Harris and Jim Vande Hei of Politico.com try to explain the anti-McCain media bias. They begin by saying that there really isn’t any. They tell us that the first reason is that the McCain campaign sucks while Barry’s soars. They tell us that journalists are professionals who ignore their personal biases and report the news. They tell us of “McCain backlash,” brought about because McCain is mean to the media and has been more conservative than fun-maverick of late. They blame in on “[j]ournalists’ hair-trigger racial ...

Press Bias
Interesting Times — Why McCain is getting hosed in the press 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. The Politico must really be feeling the heat. Thankfully, they seem to "get it" in the sense that they understand that a raw measure of negative to positive stories is not a valid measure of bias. If one campaign really is doing badly and another campaign really is doing well then it makes no sense not to report it that way. It just takes intestinal fortitude to stand up and defend it ...

Politico on Press Bias
Swampland - TIME.com — ... Politico honchos Harris and Vandehei pen a fair assessment of the evidence - and the criticism - that the press in this election cycle has favored Obama and disfavored McCain. ...

Not Biased, Doing Our Job
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — The Politico says that it prints more unfavorable stories about McCain because his campaign sucks: 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. ...

A tale of two buses
Nitpicker — ... candidates aren't supposed to be their friends and, I would argue, being buddies with the people you cover would seem to me at least unprofessional, if not explicitly unethical. Obama seems to know this and I'd be willing to bet McCain knows it, too. I'm certain he's not sitting around moaning about his lost friends in the press corps. I would even guess that it's likely John McCain only tolerated having them so close and kissing their asses because it garnered him "swooning" coverage for a decade. For the record: Strippers don't really like you ...

We Declare We are Not (Overly) Biased for the Reasons You Think We Are
The Moderate Voice — ... That was my convoluted take-away from this mea culpa by Politico’s Editor-in-Chief John F. Harris and Managing Editor Jim VandeHei. ...

"Why McCain is getting hosed in the press"
TigerHawk — By TigerHawk at 10/28/2008 03:44:00 PM One of the leading hosers of the McCain campaign explains why it is only natural that McCain should get hosed, and, by the way, it has nothing to do with the political opinions of reporters. Seperately, I'd like to add that the word "hosed" is not used often enough in the mainstream media. ...

Nobody To Blame But Himself
Comments from Left Field — ... Politico’s John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei tackle what can be a tricky subject for reporters to discuss, especially political reporters; bias.  It’s an interesting piece, and one that focused primarily on which biases do affect reporting outside of ideological biases, but what it all comes down to is that for McCain and his supporters, the only person to blame for the unbalanced negative coverage is McCain himself. ...

On the Politico's Tilt
RedState: Conservative News and Community — ... The Politico would have us believe that they are not in the tank for Obama, rather the coverage of McCain sucking is a reflection of the McCain campaign. ...

Have the media been unfair to McCain?
The Swamp — ... "OK, let's just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico," Harris and VandeHei write. ...

Delusions are fun
Newshoggers.com — ... Note how he cleverly adds the neutral coverage to Obama’s positive coverage while ignoring it with McCain to make the gap seem even larger than it is.  The actual number of positive coverage for Obama was 36%, which, to be fair, is more positive coverage for Obama than McCain, but as the guys at Politico put it when confronted with the very same data, ...

Warm And Happy In The Tank
Blue Crab Boulevard — ... John Harris and Jim Vandehei cheerfully admit that they, their site, The Politico , and the overwhelming majority of the media is cheerfully in the tank for Barack Obama. And the are completely unapologetic about it, even though their own Obama worship makes even them cringe at times. The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative. What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many ...

Politico: Is There Media Bias? So What?
Patterico's Pontifications — ... The Politico’s Harris and Vandehei seem surprised that a Pew Research study suggests there is media bias against the McCain-Palin campaign, but they aren’t letting that keep them from their ultimate point: “So What?” ...

Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Daily Kos — Pundit time! John F. Harris & Jim Vandehei: OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico. 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 ...

Townhall.com Staff: What's Hot Wednesday?
Townhall.com Blog's TownHall Blog — What are the most popular stories around the web this morning? Townhall does the surfing so you don't have to. CNN: Obama Breaks Promise on Campaign Finance Los Angeles Times: McCain Accuses Times of Suppressing Obama Video Slate: Presidential Race Politico: Why McCain is Getting Hosed in the Press US News & World Report: Blame McCain Not Palin for Struggles Wall Street Journal: Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution Chicago Tribune: Latest in Jennifer Hudson Family Case: Murderer Had Help Time Magazine: Against All Odds, McCain ...

Barbara's Daily BuzzFlash Minute for October 29, 2008
BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash — ... the Obama button' ... Another problem apparently hit Texas late Friday ... noted that there had been two huge vote flips. One woman said that when she tried to vote for a straight-party Democratic vote, the voting machine instead showed that she voted 100 percent Republican." No wonder John McCain is so confident in these last days when the polls show him behind -- he knows "the fix is in"! * * * McCain has been running a mean-spirited, nasty-negative campaign and that's the reason, "Why McCain is getting hosed in the press." "Negative is as negative does," and John Sidney ...

Is "too late" better than "never"?
Power Line — ... In this context, it's amusing to see Obama's fans at the Politico (John Harris and Jim Vandehei) attempt to explain away what they admit is coverage by their publication that has more favorable to Obama than to McCain. They claim that "negative attacks [on Obama] that in a normal campaign would be commonplace in this year would carry an out-of-bounds racial subtext." But Obama's breach of his promise about how he would finance his campaign has no "racial subtext," and it's precisely the kind of offense about which one would expect the MSM to express ongoing outrage. It ...

Media Bias
Angry Bear — The Politico has a well written piece on media bias. Not a quantitative description, but reasoned. They say it much better than I.

Media's Road to Recovery: 'The First Step Is Admitting The Problem'
NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias — ... Sure, they favored one side. But they don’t quite come out and say why. Worse, they show no inclination to do anything about it. [...] ...