PRESS BIAS - HERE?

Posted at 7:45 a.m. ET

You mean, some people are saying that the press is biased?  How can anyone think that?  Why, our journalists are serious, professional people with a neutral...oh, forget it.

Even the ombudsman, or ombudsperson, or whatever it is, of the Washington Post has now thrown in the environmentally safe towelette, and admitted that "it doesn't look good."

Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain -- and therefore there's more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good.

No it doesn't.  And I would dispute that Obama "is less well known" than McCain.  At this point in the campaign he's actually far better known to the general public because of the massive press coverage.

This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.

All in the interest, no doubt, of serving the public's right to know.  Not.

When Obama traveled to the Middle East and Europe, the coverage dwarfed that of McCain -- six Page 1 stories from July 19 to July 27, plus an earlier front-page story announcing the trip. McCain managed one Page 1 story and one Page 1 reference; the July 25 story said he might pick a vice presidential candidate soon, but that didn't happen.

The evidence builds.  But here comes the inevitable pomposity:

Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, thinks that I'm wrong to put weight on numbers. "We make our own decisions about what we consider newsworthy. We are not garment workers measuring our product every day to fulfill somebody's quota. That means as editors we decide what we think is important, because that's what our readers look for us to do -- not to adhere to some arbitrary standard.

Don't you just love the elitist comment about garment workers?  I wonder who Hamilton thinks makes his suits?  Journalism students?

The Post's ombudsman rightly concludes:

Numbers aren't everything in political coverage, but readers deserve comparable coverage of the candidates.

Yes they do.  But when you've got a bunch of sixties-influenced editors and writers who went into journalism to "make a difference," that's not what you'll get.  And that is a tragedy that can profoundly influence the future of this country.

August 19, 2008.