Journalism Replaced by Advocacy Media

A very sharp overview of media bias in this election cycle:

There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.

Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people. Here were four areas of national interest that were largely ignored.

via The End of Journalism by Victor Davis Hanson

The LA Times Ethics “Problem”

In yet another demonstration of brazen MSM bias, the LA Times refuses to report the news in their very possession while no one has any doubt that they would act in a heartbeat if the roles were reversed..

By contrast, the mainstream media want the right to mislead you, to provide you with a woefully incomplete record, but to deprive you of clarifying information even when it is readily at their disposal. You just have to take their word for what happened, and never you mind the details.

Are you comfortable taking the Obamedia’s word for it? Or do you think you ought to have a look at what Los Angeles Times has unilaterally decided not to show you?

The time for a newspaper to start worrying about journalistic ethics is when it publishes the story, not six months later when, in the stretch run of a crucial election, it gets called on an obviously incomplete report. Ethics, furthermore, are about fair and honest treatment. If the videotape at issue involved John McCain rubbing elbows with radicals or the CIA trying to protect national defense secrets, the Times would publish it and revel in the inevitable Pulitzer for its “courage” in doing so.

Let’s see the tape … or at least a transcript.

via The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online

WaPo Finally Covers Obama’s Untraceable Donations

The Washington Post is a week late in getting to the story of the Obama campaign’s low security web donations.  The default setup for credit card transactions is an up front check to match the address and phone number against what is on file; the Obama campaign shut that off and asks us to trust that they are verifying on the back end.  The McCain campaign does perform the default up front check but imagine the scandal if the roles were reversed…

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed.

Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.

How Slate’s staff and contributors are voting on Election Day.

Barack Obama: 55

John McCain: 1

Bob Barr: 1

Not McCain: 1

Noncitizen, can't vote: 4

via How Slate’s staff and contributors are voting on Election Day. – – Slate Magazine

Election 2008: Objective journalism the loser

Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?

You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.

And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”

Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried – along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.

via Election 2008: Objective journalism the loser – BostonHerald.com

CBS covering only part of the Obama fundraising story

CBS mentions Obama’s public financing flip-flop and business as usual big-cat fundraising but doesn’t mention how lax the Obama campaigns controls are for online fundraising..

Media not covering Obama confirmation of desire to redistribute wealth

On the day after new audio of Obama again supporting the “redistribution of wealth” appears, CNN’s lead political story is still about Palin’s clothes…  The blogs are covering the news while the MSM is covering for Obama. What bias?

Newspaper Endorsements Show Red/Blue divide

The red/blue divide is not state by state but by rural and urban areas.  Oh, and newspapers are located in urban areas of course..

Former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey Speaks of the Media’s Bias

Kerrey, who’s now president of The New School, claimed that “the big unreported story” of the election cycle “is the tremendous spending advantage Obama’s got. If everything else is equal, and it’s not equal in this race, but if everything else is equal, McCain hasn’t got a chance.”

Asked why he thinks the story isn’t getting adequate coverage, he responded, “There’s a liberal bias. There’s a preference for Obama and it’s getting underreported as a result.”

Then Kerrey got specific.

“If this thing was running the other way, if Obama was taking the public money and McCain had opted out and raised $150 million in September, do you think The New York Times would have an editorial against it? Do you think any of their columnists — do you think Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich would write anything at all about that? The answer is yes.”

via Gary Hart Still Denies Daring Press to Catch Him – Media Blog – Jeff Bercovici – Mixed Media – Portfolio.com

Fourth Generation Journalist Is Ashamed of His Profession

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer”, because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

via Edgelings.com » Editing Their Way to Oblivion: Journalism Sacrificed For Power and Pensions