2008 Presidential

On Tuesday, Yahoo News published an Associated Press picture of a young Palestinian gentleman who is campaigning for Barack Obama from his home in Gaza:Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Jayab, 24, is seen next to his computer, in his family house in Nusayrat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008. A young Palestinian in a Gaza refugee camp is doing his part to get out the vote for Barack…

In a just released study, "A Study in Character Assassination: How the TV Networks Have Portrayed Sarah Palin as Dunce or Demon," CMI analysts found that ABC, CBS and NBC are airing 18 negative stories for every one positive story on Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Is it any wonder that polls revealed a 17 percent increase in Palin's unfavorability ratings in just one…

If Obama wins on Tuesday night, Chris Matthews's mocking this morning of the notion that the polls are tightening will be soon forgotten.  But if McCain pulls off the upset, Matthews's smirking triumphalism will take its place in the halls of journalistic hubris near the famous photo of Harry Truman holding up the Dewey Defeats Truman front page.Just before Matthews came on, Andrea Mitchell ended…

So ACORN is committing vote fraud on a massive scale? Hey, not to worry. Vote fraud is an American traditon practiced by all the political parties. That absurd assertion was made by Bob Ponting in an article on Pittsburgh WTAE TV station's Politics web page. Ponting starts off by "reassuring" us that despite the massive vote fraud by ACORN, it is a tradition dating back to the earliest years of…

John Hollenhorst, reporter for KSL TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, wants you to forget about all those gosh darn Internet rumors. In fact, forget the Internet altogether and just rely on the "established news organizations" to tell you what is what. After all, it's just too darn hard for the common folks to figure it all out. Alarmingly the "21st Century is putting a higher responsibility on voters…

In a Tuesday night look at the battle for Pennsylvania, the CBS Evening News chose to check how, anchor Katie Couric reported, voters in the Keystone state “are doing some last-minute soul-searching.” The story showcased husband and wife “registered Republicans” who are upset by what reporter Jeff Glor characterized as McCain's “overwhelmingly negative” TV ads. The husband, who conceded he'll be…

The election results aren’t in yet, but there is one set of surveys with an unmistakeable conclusion. Everyone should be forced to admit that the publicists formerly known as the "news" media have worked themselves to the bone this year to elect Barack Obama.Polls have found it. The Pew Center for the People and the Press documented a landslide: "By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, Americans…

Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR—a self-described progressive media watch group—now a professor of independent media at Ithaca College, invited me to address his class of student bloggers this afternoon.  Asked to name some of the fairer MSM journalists, I included David Gregory on my short list.  That could understandably come as a surprise to those who remember Gregory from his days as NBC's chief…

Blogger Patrick "Patterico" Frey yesterday devoted a blog post to the difference between how the media are reporting a thwarted assassination attempt against President Bush versus the recent arrest of some skinheads plotting harm to Sen. Barack Obama.Patterico noted that the Bush conspirators were farther along in their plans than the skinheads targeting Obama, and yet there was no discernible…

Editor at large of Time magazine Mark Halperin appeared on Tuesday's edition of "Morning Joe" and admitted "mistakes have been made" in regards to the media's coverage of Barack Obama and that "people will regret it." Analyzing the fawning press that the Democratic presidential candidate has received, he added, "If Obama wins and goes on to become a hugely successful president, I think, still,…

Bob Shrum has made an addition to the growing list of things you can't say about Obama, because it's racist: don't you dare suggest Obama's never done anything hard.Dem Shrum issued his diktat while debating Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, on today's Hardball. Shrum seized on and distorted Rogers' statement, manifestly made in the political sense, that Obama had "…

Having held their peace long enough, or perhaps being longsuffering in abuse, Christianity Today (CT) released an editorial today addressing the media's penchant for misunderstanding Gov. Sarah Palin's evangelical Christian faith.NewsBusters has been tracking the media's cluelessness and biases on that front since at least early September. In an October 28 posting to their Web site, Christianity…

Your humble correspondent had figured the polls would start to narrow in the final week of the campaign but this stunning new Gallup poll shows the lead in the Presidential race narrowing much more rapidly than he had assumed. The latest Gallup poll of traditional likely voters shows the race has narrowed down to 49 percent for Barack Obama and 47 percent for John McCain. Here is Gallup's…

Are you getting tired of being told that you're a racist if you vote for John McCain?Well, former NBA star Charles Barkley basically told Campbell Brown that on CNN Monday, and went so far as saying: "The only way they can win this election is make it about race. That's the only way they can win it." Barkley also told Brown that "the polls are flat-out useless" because "most people who are…