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.

Last week, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin called the media’s performance during the campaign simply “disgusting.”

Halperin told a panel of media analysts at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election, “It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war.”

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 Time gave Michelle Obama red carpet treatment, “like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is.”

…

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.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

The Chief Minster (ALP) stated on radio that “It was one of a number of advertising options presented to the ALP by the Canberra Times.”

Needless to say, my Letter to the Editor suggesting they’d now lost all credibility didn’t get printed! Maybe they surprised that I was naive enough to think they had some credibility still to lose!

Perhaps not surprisingly, the paper has a strong anti-Christian bias which appears to be the real agenda behind the whole ‘bias’ issue.

Roger Birch

I think the things that makes me so nervous is that even the Christians that I know that give their lives for the Gospel, dont just accept the MSM but dont even make the effort to read the MSM. I am working on pointing more people towards this site.

Richard Blake

Of course in many situations laziness has the major role – they have to provide certain quantities of copy by a certain time, and if you can get it to them pre-processed, they will take it, otherwise you will end up with garbage. Very often the reporters have no idea about the subject they are reporting on anyway. Unfortunately, truth and balance in reporting is often only due to good luck, not good management.

Andrew Amos

The Left does, however supply us with some unintentional humour. They continued to ridicule Sarah Palin for the supposed amount she spent on her hair- how unusual for a female. Yet what she spent on her hair would pale into insignificance, compared to what Joe Biden would have spent on his well publicised but somewhat ineffective hair transplant.
Frank Bellet, Petrie Qld

Speaking of “media bias,” I thought that you would get a laugh after viewing the video at this link:

How Obama Got Elected.

I am so embarrassed for my country!!

Christine Watson

The thing that saddens me the most, is not that the mainstream media is biased so strongly (really, what do we expect? People love the darkness, after all – John 3:19-20), but that Christians by and large, accept the framework within which much electronic and print communication takes place. Celebrity culture, and the adoption of what is considered ’successful’ are but two things that are all too pervasive in the church these days. To be sure, communication tools should and, indeed, must be used, and used well – but I tire of people who, for example, want to ‘make movies’ for all the wrong reasons – ie. they want to ‘make it’ in TV or Hollywood or something similar. (I usually end up thinking – Why? Are so many of the ’stars’ such glowing examples of how to live?) Musicians who think that having hit songs or a recording deal is necessary for using their gift well also come to mind.

I’ve got news for those people – you never ‘make it’. It’s an illusion and there are thousands of unscrupulous people in those industries ready to exploit your talent for their own gain. These industries are sadly replete with stories of people not getting paid what their most precious work was worth. But if you make pleasing God your goal, you will be satisfied more often and more deeply because you are part of the kingdom of someone who actually cares about you (inexperienced and pharisaical fellow Christians notwithstanding).

Yes, we need Christians in virtually every field, but they need to be there for the right reasons – primarily because God has called them there and they can can demonstrate that calling. A big litmus test is the question, “What will you do if God specifically tells you not to chase being a ’star’ but to help someone else?” A mature Christian will realize that it’s not about him/her – it”s about furthering God’s kingdom – and God will never disown those who seek to be faithful to Him.

It’s important to realize the most powerful and insidious messages are usually not the obvious ones. The photo on the front page of the preferred candidate (or ‘personality’) smiling, versus the one they want you to think ill of looking aggressive or negative or captured with eyes half closed or hands midway through a gesture (looking awkward) or their tongues hanging out momentarily (there’s a John McCain photo at one of his debates that comes to mind) etc. etc. The burying of stories further down the news rundown or pages deep (to give the impression they are less important) The order of quotations within a story as well as descriptions of certain groups with negative labels (pro-life/anti-abortion, pro-marriage & family/anti-gay are but two examples that come to mind). The glamorous photos of stars in expensive clothes unaffordable to most. Ads heavily photoshopped and treated to give false impressions of beauty. The opposite extreme in promotion of good ’self-esteem’ as the highest ideal. The denigration of being single as being invalid and sad intrinsically. The acceptance of acidic and vacuous criticisms of people for daring to have a few hairs out of place or wear the ‘wrong’ colour. Even headlines are good examples. The run-up to last year’s federal election had numerous examples of Howard-bashing, but I doubt that most people were aware of how persuasive a carefully worded line of text in big bold print can be.

Perhaps the most destructive of all is the pervasive “me, me” individualism and subservience to relativism which translates into materialism, hedonism, consumerism and superficiality. And the sense that we live interdependent lives is trampled on and lost. Jesus’ statement to “do to others what you would have them do to you” sounds like outright rebellion in that kind of climate.

But Christians spend a lot of time getting upset about too much sex, swearing or anti-God content on TV. To be sure, these things aren’t good and need to be stopped, but the worst messages that the mainstream media sends out have sadly already infected the church to a great extent. The overt content is just symptomatic of the real cancer. I wish people would just spend at least a quarter of the time they spend watching TV reading the Bible instead, making use of the opportunity they have to learn something life-changing from the God who loves them deeply, personally, intimately. And who paid the ultimate price to win them. That’s in stark contrast to the MSM, who just want you to absorb one thing to the next, proliferating the sense of the importance of the ‘next big thing’ to get a hand on the contents of your wallet. What was incredible and amazing just a few years ago is slow, outdated, lame and/or unfashionable today – just so they can sell you what’s new. The trick is to get you to associate ‘old’ with ‘wrong’. But ‘relevance’ can be a cruel master over time.

It’s a delicate balance, in many ways, to walk as a follower of Jesus. I re-read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis recently, and often if the devil doesn’t get you with one extreme, he’ll try for the opposite – and if you recognize both, he’ll go for pride. So that is why we must take our eyes off ourselves and onto God. He is unchanging, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, so as Christians we need to realize we have been given and hold in our possession a totally unique treasure – something truly counter-cultural but also also fundamentally reliable, unlike everything in this world. “For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:18)

Mark Rabich

Yes, if Prop 8 had gone the other way, and pro-family forces began protesting, the lefties would be screaming that we need to accept the democratic process and all just go home and shut up. Strange, but they are not saying that about the homosexual protestors.

And thanks for the nomination.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Really good article. That quote about:

“As for career prospects in this bastion of gay men and feminists, heterosexual males may as well go and commit suicide.”

…is REALLY sad to learn – but so accurately descriptive.

I think that this is the reason why the “No on Prop. 8″ radicals are protesting the passage of Prop. 8. They just CANNOT BELIEVE that it passed. Nor, can they ever consider the fact that the majority of people in liberalville California do not think like they do!

One more thing – wanted to let you know that I have nominated your blog for the 2008 Weblog Awards in the “Religion” category!

Christine Watson

Meanwhile their avalanche of scrutiny on Sarah Palin was relentless: we learned everything about her clothes, her hairdos and how much both cost; her children and whether or not Trig was really her own child; her (alleged) incompetence on matters of foreign or other policy etc. etc. etc. See the allegations stated and refuted on:
http://fightthepalinsmears.com/

Likewise Biden was given a complete pass: his plagiarism; his multitude of gaffes (e.g. “FDR went on television to the nation after the 1929 Wall St crash”); his incompetence on foreign policy (the VP debate showed the relative novice Sarah Palin knew more than he did, was more adept, and got her facts right), just to mention a few.

Yes, journalism is dead! Therefore we need a multitude of sites like this one of Bill’s (I would like to get my own started up as well) so that as in America the ‘blogosphere’ (as it is called) can start to exercise the same sort of power here that it does in the U.S.A. that way we can start to challenge the Fairfax Press, the Nine Network, the ABC, and journalistic elite (so-called) in general.

Murray Adamthwaite