Media Bias?

"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

As George Washington was leaving office, he specifically addressed the importance of an unbiased media as a means of providing a balance to the information provided the general public by its' government. I do not think that George could have envisioned our current national environment where this country's main stream media , or as George would have said, "Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge", blithely tossed away the objectivity of professional journalism and jumped into bed with that structure of government which gives force to public opinion.

The mainstream media's support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign was so biased that even major insiders are now admitting they were shocked by its depth and depravity. Of course, they waited until after the election to be "shocked!"

Last week, Time magazine's Mark Halperin called the media's performance during the campaign simply "disgusting." He added, "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

According to the Web site Politico, Halperin, who edits Time's political site "The Page," zeroed in on two New York Times articles near the end of the campaign that profiled both Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama.

"The story about Cindy McCain was vicious," Halperin said. "It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it cast her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her." But the Times gave Michelle Obama red carpet treatment, "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is."

Halperin, a former ABC News political director, allowed that some of the press coverage simply reflected the extreme efficiency of Obama's presidential campaign. During the campaign, conservatives criticized the pro-Obama coverage, but it had little effect. columnist David Limbaugh noted: "Never has that been clearer than in the 2008 presidential election, during which they are covering up rather than covering Barack Obama's shady past and alliances, his knee-deep involvement in corrupt practices threatening the very core of our democratic system, and his many policy misrepresentations."

Limbaugh noted that the press went into a tizzy over Sarah Palin's wardrobe, but ignored extravagances like Obama's Greek million dollar coliseum mirage and his flip-flop on public financing of his campaign.

Now that the election is over, Halperin is not alone in admitting the bias. The Washington Post's ombudsman recently conceded that the paper’s coverage was skewed strongly in favor of Obama and against the McCain-Palin ticket.

These post-election epiphanies and subsequent admissions on the part of the mainstream media that they all but abandoned their journalistic principles during the recent presidential campaign will amount to nothing unless they heed the cautionary words of our first President and those abandoned principles are embraced once again.