As common to the Republican playbook as Wildcat is to the Miami Dolphins, claims of mainstream media’s bias against the McCain camp (coming from, quite conveniently, the McCain camp and its supporters) have become a more significant element to this election cycle than ever before. Is this legitimate, or is it rhetoric fundamental to McCain’s characterization of Obama as a different, in the hip-pocket of the bourgeois, with the unfair advantage of the entire American media at his back.

It’s rhetoric. How effective it is depends on how rational our electorate wants to be.

For starters, it seems a bit strange to suggest a massive media bias when Fox News exists.  They get the second-highest number of viewers among cable news networks and clearly have a right-wing slant. By being one of the three to four most significant members of the mainstream media and spinning for the right in their coverage, their very existence makes the claim of an overall media bias to the left suspect. And as one of the biggest articulators of this mainstream media bias complaint, it seems a little inauthentic for them to whine about something they're a huge part of.   (Though, like McCain, the attacks, when handled as deftly as they do, can make them appear as great American crusaders to those that ignore the actual information.)

As an independent voter not constrained by the ideological partisanship so many yahoos out there seem to be, when I watch most television news, I see a concerted effort to be objective, the key to journalism. The broadcast networks generally execute this difficult job as well as can be expected. The cable networks deviate a bit as they add commentary to their reports for the sake of interest and programming, with CNN pretty fairly presenting all sides (or, in Lou Dobbs’ case, disdain for all sides), MSNBC leaning to the left, and Fox News to the right. (Since they don't get nearly the concentrated response and absorption TV does, let's leave legitimate print and on-line outlets out of the discussion; they are fairly equal in number of right-leaning and left-leaning organizations anyway.)

So if Fox News is right-leaning, MSNBC, with fewer viewers, is left-leaning, and ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN toe-the-line (they do), doesn't that make it, at worse, a wash for coverage of the right? 

Most readers will probably agree on MSNBC’s place on the objectivity spectrum. Like Fox News, MSNBC is none too subtle, although more compartmentalized (show by show bias, most notably in Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show, versus overall slant). What makes Fox News perhaps more dangerous is their insistence that their opinionated coverage is straight-forward journalism. What makes them more annoying is the self-righteousness that reeks up every time Fox disingenuously brags about being 'fair and balanced.'

If you don’t see Fox News as right-leaning, two quick things to think about: 

*You're either clinically delusional, or have no objectivity when it comes to the political process and its coverage (let’s give you credit for the latter).

*Consider one of the more absurd examples of Fox News' subjectivity. After Sarah Palin's wonderfully-received speech at the Republican National Convention, Fox ran promos praising Bill O'Reilly and other Fox personalities for being exceptionally 'fair and balanced' when they characterized the legitimate questions about her qualifications and background posed by other mainstream news outlets when she was first named McCain's running mate as viscous attacks and lies (their exact quotes were more flowery, more bellicose). If I need to explain the irony of opinionated condemnations being used in the same journalistic statement as the term 'fair and balanced,' you're probably not going to be able to keep up with this discussion.

This example also brings up some specific claims of mainstream media bias, which, upon examination, illustrates the willingness of you fair-minded media crusaders out there to toss out logic and facts in the name of justification. For instance, if you believe that the coverage of Palin's daughter's pregnancy were the viscous attacks cited above and worthy of Fox's over-the-top defense, you should remember that that reporting began with a press release put out by the McCain camp (and covered to the same extent by Fox themselves), with the initial coverage followed by a quickly-formed consensus among the mainstream media that this wasn't a continuing political story.  It’s hardly been covered since. (Far-right or far-left web-sites are a different story, and not relevant to the discussion of mainstream media being held here.) 

What most of the initial Palin coverage actually focused on was her background and qualifications (and how effective the McCain camp vetted her), which based on everything we've heard from the McCain campaign about Obama, clearly isn't off-limits. And many from the right have said that Obama has never been confronted with the type of hard-hitting coverage and investigation Palin received from the media, and they're absolutely right.  He's gotten much worse. 

Obama's relative lack of experience, especially as it related to Hillary Clinton's, was one of the major narratives through-out the Democratic primary, as well as Bill Ayers and especially Jeremiah Wright. These stories have been reported and reported and reported, months and months of it.  As a viewer of CNN, ABC News, Fox News, and even MSNBC during the primaries, I could give you every detail of the Ayers story and Wright story and sub-stories and reports of how he didn’t wear a flag pin and was sworn into the Illinois state senate on the Koran and other un-American activities and has Muslim connections. All these issues have gotten more than enough exposure, with most of the stories eventually established as patently false  (God help us all if I have to tell you which ones.)  Accept that everything you want discussed about Barack Obama already has been and move on.  Now news outlet can or should keep re-doing the same stories.  If you missed it, too bad.  It's there in cyberspace.

Stories that haven't gotten nearly the coverage, and I'm glad for it, include the Palins' affiliations with the Alaskan Independence Party and the Alaskan legislator's bi-partisan investigation of Palin, concluding that she abused her power as governor by pursuing a personal agenda in the firing of Walt Monegan (while breaking no laws), supposedly the very type of self-interest corruption she's going to eliminate in Washington. Read carefully because here’s the point to this: There are more important issues to discuss then these and I don't particularly feel the need to hear about them, but it should be acknowledged by you media crusaders out there, that, if the mainstream media was truly out to get Republications, we'd hear a lot more about these stories.   

Based on these examples, and way too many hours watching coverage of this election, the only double-standard I see is McCain’s. He doesn’t want his campaign subject to the same reporting he’s demanding for Obama’s; when it’s about Palin it’s off-limits, when it’s Obama, McCain or his surrogates say the media are trying to influence an election by not spending hours and hours covering stories that were excessively dealt with months ago, and have nothing to do with our economy, foreign policy, education, or healthcare.

But this is a campaign. Any advantage that can be had, will be had.  What is especially interesting is the droves of ordinary, right-wing Americans that have followed McCain's lead on this media bias kick, and the psychology behind it. I suppose it’s natural for human beings to want to have their opinions and emotional attachments to certain candidates validated, and any organization that presents a person or story with questions instead of praise isn't doing that. It's easier to believe that these big bad news organizations are out to get you and your ideas, than to acknowledge that you (or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham or Ann Coulter) might not always be right.   (And I don't put Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow in that list because I've never heard them whine about mainstream media bias -- they've complained about Fox News a bunch, yes, but not overall media.)

This hyper-partisanship, this view that sees anyone who disagrees with you as out to get you is, ready for it, un-American. I don’t think the founding fathers, the original patriots who feared what a competitive party system would do the fundamental idea of open exchange of ideas, would see this self-centered need for validation as contributing to the greatness of America. They’d see it as pathetic, as a great flaw of weak men more interested in being right than in what is best for this exceptional nation.