One of the most commented-on pieces on ABCNews.com is a long posting by Michael Malone on “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline.”  If you wade through the 2295 words (yes, I counted), he makes some good points:

“What I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del…

“Why, to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven’t we seen an interview with Sen. Obama’s grad school drug dealer — when we know all about Mrs. McCain’s addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden’s endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media? “

Good questions–but Malone’s conclusion is from left field.  To editors “presiding over a dying industry: Obama “offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career…With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.”

it’s true that Barack Obama has gotten positive media coverage since the beginning of his campaign, when any honest person would say he was a long shot.  Back then (and really, for most of his campaign) he was the underdog, and certainly the media likes the underdog narrative.  Then there was his youth, his personal story (up from poverty through education and hard work!) and, not least, his race, however that’s defined.

To echo the technology journalism for which Malone is known, editors do like the ‘new new thing’–and that ain’t McCain.  It was Sarah Palin, until journalists did the vetting job the McCain campaign should have done.

On the flip side, as Kurtz says “Critics, including many conservatives, say the media have been too easy on Obama, and bias cannot be discounted as a factor. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that from the end of the conventions through the debates, McCain’s coverage was more than three times as negative than Obama’s.”

Yes, the press is liberal: Slate magazine is voting 55:1 Obama over McCain, for example.   But the press used to love John McCain, when it perceived that he stood for something. 

As a media trainer, I would fault the McCain campaign with failing to put out a positive, detailed agenda about what they were running for and delivering consistent messages supporting it.  (Hint: Lower taxes and Joe the Plumber ain’t “Morning in America.”)

The Politico refers to this reality here (via Andrew):

“There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe. As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.”