Media Bias the Halperin Kurfuffle

TW: Mark Halperin from Time got much attention over the weekend with his diatribe alleging that the MSM was in the tank for Obama. I am so biased as to not even attempt to comment but Economist (as usual) has a good and relatively balanced viewpoint. I will say Halperin has made more than his fair share of stupid comments in the past and comparing Obama coverage to the Iraq debacle is on its face dubious.

From Economist:
"MARK HALPERIN..on how the media covered the race.
'It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.'

Halperin scours the media for giving Mr Obama a pass on his double-back on campaign finance. After signing an agreement to work toward a public-financing agreement, Mr Obama decided to opt out and ask his 3m donors for money instead. If John McCain had done that, Mr Halperin asks, "Do you think the press would have said he's buying the election by running a negative campaign, and questioned him on it?" The media instead wanted to see Mr Obama "etched in stained glass and on Mt. Rushmore simultaneously."

...Halperin's argument might become conventional wisdom, but is it true? The 2008 election put American political reporters in the unusual position of covering two politicians that were generally well-liked, by voters as well as reporters. Both candidates were underdogs, and that led to bursts of positive coverage just as it would in sports journalism or celebrity journalism. Both candidates consistently trailed in national polls for the entirety of 2007 (in the case of Mr Obama) and from the summer through December (for Mr McCain).

The press was not particularly tough on either candidate until February, when the New York Times ran a confusing story linking Mr McCain to an attractive lobbyist, and March, when ABC News ran footage of Mr Obama's pastor ranting from the pulpit.Both campaigns launched character and background attacks on the other—Mr McCain's attacking former terrorist Bill Ayers, Mr Obama's attacking 1980s scammer Charles Keating. Both campaigns complained that these associations were not covered enough. But that happens in every campaign. Ask a Democrat who worked for Al Gore whether the media did enough stories about George W. Bush's sale of stock in Harken Energy.

But clearly, Mr Obama's accomplishments were given more play than those of Mr McCain, as everything he did was a historical first. As National Review's Jim Geraghty points out, Mr Obama made the cover of Time magazine 23 times to only 10 times for Mr McCain. (The two men shared five covers.) But several of Mr Obama's covers were probing pieces about race, and several covered his extended primary battle with Hillary Clinton.

It was her doing, not Mr Obama's, that kept Mr McCain out of headlines from February to June.Liberal pundits will argue to the death with Mr Halperin: it was their belief that the media was overly fond of Mr McCain and gave him, not Mr Obama, a free ride until his choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate curdled their affections. The truth is that the race was historic, that there wasn't much investigation of either candidate, and that after April (and the Wright and "bitter, clinging" scandals) Mr Obama ran a largely gaffe-free campaign and was rewarded for it, while Mr McCain made catastrophic blunders ("I'm suspending my campaign") and was punished. It is hard to imagine Mr Obama getting the positive coverage that Mr Halperin regrets if he had run a blunder-a-week race like John Kerry or Al Gore."