MEDIA SINS

Posted at 8:08 p.m. ET

We are dignified in defeat, but that doesn't mean forgetting what we learned and observed in this campaign.  One of the things we learned is how serious media bias can be, how pervasive, and how damaging.  We must not forget.  The media will not be our friend.  In 2010 and 2012 our side must learn, as Ronald Reagan learned, how to get around the press and speak directly to the American people.  I think John McCain was a bit naive about that, thinking his media "friends" were real.

We've been presenting here some media gems, illustrating how bad things are in the print and broadcast worlds.  Here are a few others.  First, the impeccably dense Christiane Amanpour, also quoted here yesterday, continues her flight into ecstasy with this:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A page of history has been turned and a tsunami of goodwill is rumbling across the Atlantic to the Pacific, from pole to pole and across our many continents.

Pole to pole?  Really?  Did she interview the penguins?  Yes, of course.  Penguins are black and white together.  Of course they're cheering Obama.  We'll be researching quotes from penguin newspapers. 

I don't know who at the North Pole she's referring to.  Maybe she has secret sources.

Oh, by the way, about this goodwill bit:  The "goodwill" after the attacks of September 11th lasted precisely 48 hours.  Within two days the BBC was on the air with vicious, anti-American programming.  Don't expect too much "goodwill."

President-elect Barack Obama has brought America back, and yet he inherits a monumental mess.

Nothing like a little editorializing.  And get this:

No sooner had he said "I do" than world leaders, pundits and of course the media started weighing in with their wish lists.

When did he say "I do"?  What is this woman talking about?  Was there a wedding? 

Actually, the whole world pronounced itself sick of what it perceived to be Bush's multipronged military approach. From the start, President Obama will have to tackle the campaign pledge that defined his candidacy: bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq and ending the war there.

The whole world is doing things again.  Apparently, everyone in the world agrees with Christiane.  This individual is the chief international correspondent of CNN, and writes like a child.  And the Iraq pledge never defined Obama's candidacy.  In fact, he became rather vague about it.

It is no enviable task, but America's next president starts with a world of best wishes.

Again, the whole world is involved.  It's clear that Amanpour, in her rapture, didn't notice the threats from Moscow that accompanied Obama's election. 

How embarrassing for a major news operation.

And then there's the AP, whose reporting during the campaign was particularly disgraceful.  You can't find a more blatant example of bias than this, which appears in an AP news story today:

Skepticism, however, was high in the Muslim world. The Bush administration alienated those in the Middle East by mistreating prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

The Bush administration mistreated prisoners at Abu Ghraib?  I thought they prosecuted the individuals who did it.  And Guantanamo?  There are debatable legal issues, but there has been no evidence presented of real mistreatment.  This is very bad, propagandistic reporting.  Or this:

Some Iraqis, who have suffered through five years of a war ignited by the United States and its allies, said they would believe positive change when they saw it.

Ignited by the United States and its allies?  You mean Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it?  We just decided to invade a country whose name we picked out of a hat?

This is disgraceful stuff.  And, by the way, this is the kind of thing fed to readers around the world.  America's image is created less by America's actions than by the corruption of news organizations, many of which are owned by ideologies.

We have a tough fight ahead to preserve freedom.  It's sad that some of our opponents will be in the media, but they will.

November 5, 2008.