I never watch or read ABC News, but somehow, and for reasons I still do not fully understand, I happened upon an article by Michael S. Malone called “Media’s Presidential Bias and Decline.” I have no idea who Michael S. Malone is, but from the way he spends the first half of the article listing his media credentials, he sounds “important.”
His argument, an overly dramatic one I might add, is that the mainstream media is flushing itself down the toilet because of its open bias towards Senator Barack Obama. The evidence of this, according to Malone, is the sheer sparsity of negative coverage of the Obama campaign. There have been so many negative stories about McCain and Palin, he argues.
Before I continue my critique of Malone’s McCain ad (ahem) I mean article, I should make two things clear: 1. I have experience as a journalist but am not employed in the mainstream media and 2. I have decided to vote for Obama in this election.
Malone, on the other hand, does belong to the mainstream media, and the bias which he laments is partially his own. And I must say that, at least on the surface, I agree with him. There has undoubtedly been more negative coverage of McCain, his running mate, and his family. On this issue, Malone and I are in complete agreement.
Where I believe Malone falters, however, is in assuming it is because the media is biased in favor of Obama. We’re talking about the same media, Malone’s own ABC in particular, that has bent over backwards for the past eight years while George W. Bush covered up his prior knowledge of 9/11, committed war crimes, authorized the torture of prisoners (some of them innocent people), spied on his own people, illegally detained some of his own citizens, exposed an undercover CIA operative, and dissolved the fat US economy into leftover grease.
Any one of W’s offenses could have been impeachable (some of them are even treason), yet the mainstream media, while reporting it, has essentially condoned it. When they could have relentlessly exposed and reported the president’s crimes, they did little more than mention them. Whenever a protest occurred and police invariably beat and arrested protesters, the mainstream media cameras were absent. You would think that the country was still relatively pleased with Bush because very few anti-Bush or anti-War coverage was ever given.
Therein lies the problem, Mr. Malone. The mainstream media rarely cracks the surface. They’ll report the story but very rarely will they go beneath the surface on important controversial issues. McCain has plenty of surface faults, and they have done their job to report them. Obama simply does not have as many. Am I saying this because I like Obama better or think he’s a better man? No. I’m saying it because McCain is older, a lot older.
McCain has been in office for decades and goes out of his way very often to remind us of that. He is never going to let us forget about Ronald Regan (even though many of us would like to forget him). So of course there is going to be more negative material to cover on McCain. He has simply done more negative things. He has done a lifetime of negative things. You could write volumes on his deeds (as one day someone will).
This is where Malone’s argument falls flat, and the example he uses proves to be his own tragic flaw. In speaking about the “war” in Lebanon three summers ago, Malone writes:
I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story…
Thank you Mr. Malone. You proved my point very nicely without even realizing it. When Israel attacked Lebanon, the death tolls were enormous. 1,191 Lebonese civilians lost their lives. There was indiscriminate bombing of homes, villages, and even relief aid vehicles. Less than 250 Hezbollah fighters were killed. Hezbollah, which launched missiles day and night into Israel, killed 121 soldiers and only 44 civilians.
Again it is a simple matter of numbers. How can you give equal coverage to a “war” that is not equal. When people are literally dying left and right of you, how can you leave that to report what, by comparison, is only a handful of deaths? What is surprising is that the media actually did report them and never failed to mention Israeli deaths to the point where people until this day believe that the “war” was an equal and just one, that Israel was justified in the atrocities they committed, and that Hezbollah are the terrorists.
Mr. Malone, it is a simple problem of logic. Yours is flawed. Media coverage is quantitative. It can be measured. Your mainstream media, Mr. Malone, has long argued that the independent candidates (such as Ralph Nader) or even alternative candidates (such as Dennis Kucinich [D] or Ron Paul [R]) do not deserve as much media coverage because they are not as popular (which is a circular argument). Well, Mr. Malone, like it or not, Senator Obama is popluar, extremely popular, despite the McCain campaign’s relentless attempts to smear him with negative ads, many of which are outright lies.
I can think of plenty of criticisms of Obama, so do not think that I am in love with the man. His show (and I emphasize this word) of unbiased support for Israel during his campaign and his rather muffled show of what can best be described as “blackness” are both disturbing yet not upsetting. I can understand why he felt he needed to behave that way in a predominantly white America that is still electrically charged with racist particles, and his previous record indicates that he is not so black and white (no pun intended). But the McCain campaign’s criticisms have been paltry at best, and Mr. Malone’s last ditched attempt to rescue John McCain is simply too pathetic and too late.
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