In other news, water still wet, Texas still hot in the summer. That's the reaction I had to the Rasmussen poll that showed most Americans think journalists are trying to help Obama win the presidency.
The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage...
In the latest survey, a plurality of Democrats—37%-- say most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of the campaign. Twenty-seven percent (27%) believe most reporters are trying to help Obama and 21% in Obama’s party think reporters are trying to help the Republican candidate.
Among Republicans, 78% believe reporters are trying to help Obama and 10% see most offering unbiased coverage.
As for unaffiliated voters, 50% see a pro-Obama bias and 21% see unbiased coverage. Just 12% of those not affiliated with either major party believe the reporters are trying to help McCain.
In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters.
Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to trust campaign information from family and friends than from reporters. Democrats are evenly divided as to who they would trust more.
In other words, the the argument made by moonbats (and discussed by Dana at this post) is a minority view, even among Democrats!
But seriously, why should anyone, at this point, doubt that journalists are in the tank for Obama? We've been subjected for weeks to fawning coverage of Obama and slams (or worse, dismissal) of John McCain. Go back to Memeorandum any day of the week and you'll find far worse coverage of John McCain than of Barack Obama...and this is while he was flip-flopping on every issue of his campaign.
And now the media are having to sheepishly take a second look at their coverage of the candidates.
For each of the weeks between June 9 and July 13, Obama had a much more significant media presence. The Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates more than 300 political stories each week in newspapers, magazines and television to measure whether each candidate is talked about in more than 25 percent of the stories.
Every week, Obama played an important role in more than two-thirds of the stories. For July 7-13, for example, Obama was a significant presence in 77 percent of the stories, while McCain was in 48 percent, the PEJ said.
Sure, there are some weeks Obama's going to make more news, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
But every week?
"No matter how understandable it is given the newness of the candidate and the historical nature of Obama's candidacy, in the end it's probably not fair to McCain," he said.
But they're still trying to excuse it:
NBC News President Steve Capus said he finds it funny this is an issue, considering how much people have accused the press corps — and still do — of being too cozy with McCain. The Arizona senator had been a frequent guest of "Meet the Press."
"We're just trying to do our jobs," Capus said. "There's no question that there's great news value in Sen. Obama's trip overseas. That's why we are doing this."
Really? You're just doing your jobs? That's why the major networks are covering Obama's jaunt to the Middle East as though he were president? The carefully-orchestrated video shoots have even veteran journalists calling it fake news.
My hope is that this Obama worship will come back to bite them on the ass. It sounds like the American public isn't fooled by it in the least.
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom has more on when military interviews are acceptable and when they are not.
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