On July 3, 1999, The New York Times exposed Al Gore for lying about his family in a national convention speech as vice president of the United States. In 1996, Gore had moved the Democrats to tears by claiming that when his sister Nancy died of cancer in 1984, he vowed then and there to oppose the tobacco industry. How courageous – and completely untrue. The Times found Gore campaigned in 1988 boasting of his tobacco-farming prowess. So he lied through his teeth. Network coverage from ABC, CBS, or NBC on this whopper, even as Gore prepared a presidential run? Zero.

On July 13, 2011, this cycle repeated itself, when The New York Times reported on another national Democrat lying about a death in the family in his convention address, presidential debates, just about everywhere. That was Barack Obama in 2008 claiming his mother Ann Dunham died of cancer battling with insurance companies all the way through. Dramatic? Yes. But an utter lie. Network coverage of this new jaw-dropper on ABC, CBS, and NBC? Also zip, zilch, zero.

Is this, sadly, going to be the second campaign in a row where the so-called mainstream media will make a fetish of fact-checking the Republican candidates while ignoring the misstatements and gaffes of the Democratic candidates — of which there is now just one, President Barack Obama?

Last week, as both Newsbusters and the MRC documented, the New York Times (Kevin Sack) published a lengthy piece on how the White House “declined to challenge” a new book by ex-Times reporter Janny Scott that documents how Obama “mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.”

Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech Tuesday was a transparent attempt to quell the controversy over his ties to fiery anti-American minister Jeremiah Wright.