It is no secret that the mainstream press has long favored Democratic candidates; a widely reported poll showing that journalists voted for Kerry over Bush by a margin of 68 percent to 25 percent in the 2004 election is just one of many similar studies dating as far back as 1964.
Barack Obama’s campaign, however, set a new standard for media favoritism. So slanted was the coverage toward the Illinois Senator that a July 2008 Rasmussen Reports survey found that 49 percent of likely voters believed reporters would favor Obama in their campaign coverage over his Republican rival John McCain.
The latest chapter in the media’s love affair with Obama comes as prominent journalists, no longer content to cheer the president-elect from the sidelines, have decided to join his administration.
Most recent is the case of TIME’s James Carney, who is leaving the magazine after 20 years to serve as Vice President Joe Biden's communications director. The well-connected Carney is a regular guest on Washington’s Sunday shows, and is married to Claire Shipman, the senior Washington correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America.
Meanwhile, ABC’s Linda Douglass, who signed on as Obama’s campaign spokesperson in May of this year, is now on his Inaugural Committee. An unnamed Democratic official admitted to Politico when the news broke, “There are those on the right who will see this as the embodiment of their assertions about the media and Obama, and this is just making it official.”
One of “those on the right” is Tim Graham. The director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, Graham saw Carney’s move as another “example of the revolving door between journalism and Democratic politics.”
“James Carney at TIME magazine has been a very traditional TIME magazine liberal, so it’s not a stretch for him to move over into working for Joe Biden,” Graham remarked. “This is a man who has mocked, for example, Congressman Dan Burton [R-Indiana] as a ‘Torquemada’ figure. He is not someone who's hesitated from slamming conservatives in the pages of TIME magazine.”
Indeed, Carney and Douglass are merely the latest examples of the revolving door between the press and Democratic politics.
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Examiner Coverage: Elections 2008
Comments
What you mean Chris "I felt this thrill going up my leg"Matthews and Keith Olbermann weren't selected for some type of position. These two shameless Obama marks would be beside themselves just for the chance to tell the world that their boss was THE ONE. Damn Matthews get a grip son and show some self respect.
Well, if feel your job is endangered - there is great uncertainty in print media and some television networks right now - might as well flee to a great government post, ka-ching ka-ching.
Does Rick Warren love the Muslim Brotherhood?
creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/does-rick-warren-love-the-muslim-brotherhood
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So, the pay-back for political prejudice begins ...
D.
As we have seen in the Canada's this becomes a marriage between the Mongoose & the Rattlesnake.
The public becomes the prey.
With both groups enabling each other, covering up any indiscretions, the other three estates of any Democracy, become a pool of putrefaction.
Just look at both the Church or the Judiciary. The Inhuman rights groups are starting to eat at them as well. It suborns any free polity.
This is a result of Multiculturalism becoming a fetid lake of mire, by the feeding pipe of moral relativism.
By this detestable nuptials of the Media with Politicians, the public becomes their slaves not citizens. With people divided tribally by entitlements, age, sex, race theory, gender, ethnic group . All for a small minority of elitists. Need a new GG , just pick from the press. An appointed Senator , just whistle up CTV or CBC. This is debauched at base. It can only end in social dissolution of some kind.
JMO
I do not mind government hiring experts at their profession to serve in posts calling upon such skills. I do hate the taint of quid pro quo. I also cannot stand the, what I perceive as, faux outrage by the media that seems to occur everytime someone else with industry experience is brought into a government post. The media seems to find nothing wrong with it's own "experts" but their wrath is provoked if a CEO is brought to serve in Commerce, or a Financier with Treasury.
"These two shameless Obama marks would be beside themselves just for the chance to tell the world that their boss was THE ONE. Damn Matthews get a grip son and show some self respect."
According to this after-election comment by Matthews on Joe Scarborough's morning program,
"I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work, and I think, yeah, it is my job. My job is to help this country.",
it doesn't sound like Matthews thinks he needs to be paid by Obama. He plans to can do it as if he did, while being paid to be a journalist.
You have to give him credit for outright honesty about his political bias. A rarity.....the admission that is. :)
Someone needs to make all media employees that write or are in front of the camera to disclose their percentage of bias. Similar in scope to what the tobacco industry has to put on the side of a pack of cigarettes.
Something like:
'99% of the information is provide by this writer/announcer is personal information and not necessarily the truth. In addition, my expertise in this area is based on...."
I'm sure someone can improve the statement over what mine.
Okay, I'm going to run for POTUS in 2012. I'm telling y'all right now that my first choice for White House spokesperson will be Billy Mays, yes, he of a thousand infomercials. And, my campaign theme will center on "Why the heck NOT?"
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