McCain, the Media, and Iraq

John McCain's campaign has been complaining quite a bit recently about what they see as media bias in Obama's favor.

But are most journalists really out to get McCain? The evidence says no:

In an interview with John McCain, CBS scrubbed an erroneous statement by the candidate about the Iraq surge and replaced it with a soundbyte criticizing Obama's position on the war in Iraq.

If the mainstream media were actually out to get McCain, news shows would be playing this clip nonstop:


(Video via Reason.)

Those of us in the media should stop fretting about being neutral and focus instead on being objective. Fair and balanced are not synonyms and they're not both equally important to journalistic integrity. Sometimes one side of an argument is simply much stronger than the other side. Sweeping such differences in important policy positions under the rug is a disservice to the American people.

At this point the so-called Fourth Estate is more of a toy poodle than a watchdog. And many journalists actually expression confusion as to why people who are really interested in what's going on in the world are abandoning the mainstream media in record numbers. Isn't the reason obvious? The media is in fact biased, but not in favor of any particular candidate. Rather, it's biased in favor of all of them because most journalists refuse to persistently call any of them on the prodigious quantities of bullshit they all spew on a daily basis.