-Read the excerpt below (from Matthew Sheffield's post at NewsBusters.com on 11/24/08).
-Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.
Wednesday's Biased Item - November 26, 2008
In the excerpt below, Jake Tapper of ABC News responds to comments made by Mark Halperin of Time magazine, including the statement:
"[The media's coverage of the presidential election] is the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."
Do you agree with Jake Tapper and Mark Halperin? Explain your answer. (Read the complete comments at Jake Tapper and Mark Halperin.)
Following … complaints from Time magazine’s Mark Halperin that the press hugely favored Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, ABC political correspondent Jake Tapper … agreed. [He said on his blog]:
Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I too wonder just how fair the media coverage of this campaign was.
Case in point: perhaps the most unfair and negative TV ad run during the entire campaign, by either side, was the Spanish-language TV ad Obama ran against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, that got very little media coverage.
Why didn’t it get more coverage? If McCain had run a comparable ad — with unfair charges, trying to exploit racial tensions — would it have been as under-covered?
…
But I believe Halperin’s larger point … is the fact that reporters have an obligation to be better.
… kudos to both Tapper and Halperin for honestly admitting the press needs to back off its Obama fealty. They are in a small minority willing to speak this truth to the media establishment.