This
morning, though fully-awake, I had to blink my eyes when I read the
Washington Post’s editorial “Mr. Obama in Iraq.” I thought I must be
having a hallucination. Impossible, an honest assessment of Barack Obama
in a traditional newspaper? Can't be! I blinked my eyes again and
reread. OMG! Truth...finally...the American Way!
Ah, the elusive American Way. When reason and thoughtfulness, when gray
matter was put to work to reach rational conclusion. The American Way,
when justice and honor commanded our lives and sound judgment was at the
core of our truth.
Gray was once the color of our politics. The left had their ideas, the
right had different agendas, but somewhere in the middle America met in
that gray area. There was a balance of power, we struggled, but we found
our center.
Does the media reflect the country or does the country reflect the
media?
In these times of polarizing politics, when America struggles to find
its core, when the country seems to be tottering on an imbalanced
see-saw of differing ideas, when the left is at war with the right and
vice versa, it sometimes seems as if America is suffering from a
national case of bi-polar disorder and could use a healthy dose of
Prozac.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our press where reason and sound
judgment seem to have lost their way as evidenced in the bias reporting
of Barack Obama.
Poor John McCain, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. According
to the Manchester Union Leader, lonely MAC disembarked from
his plane in the Live Free or Die State the other day and was met on the
tarmac by ONE, yes, that’s right, one, reporter! The rest were either
accompanying Barack Obama while he did “His Heart Was Young and Gay”
overseas tour, or sitting in their newsroom waiting for the Associated
Press (AP) reports to come across the wires so they could copy and paste
the AP stories into their own.
In the same week that McCain was struggling for press coverage, the
New York Times rejected an editorial submitted by the Republican
candidate, “My Plan for Iraq,” a rebuttal to an earlier op-ed published
in the Times by McCain rival, Barack Obama, the Times
Chosen One.
LINK
Is it any wonder that the New York Times today reported that its
second-quarter earnings fell 82 percent from the year ago? Their logo,
“All the News That’s Fit to Print” should now read “All the News Not
Fit to Print!”
If the New York Times and other news outlets need
further proof that the public is disenchanted with the quality of coverage these days take a look at what Rasmussen reported this week.
According to their polling fully forty-nine percent (49%) of voters
believe most reporters will try to help Barack Obama win the election
with their coverage, up from 44% a
month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win,
little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%)
believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.
The polling was done before the New York Times refused
to run the op-ed submitted by McCain. Imagine what the next poll will
reveal on the subject of media bias.
There was a time that John McCain was considered the darling
of the media, so maybe there’s truth in that old saying “everything that
goes around comes around.”
Here’s how a CBS blog describes those days: “Back
in the halcyon days of the 2000 campaign, McCain was on the other side
of the equation, basking in the media attention his bull sessions on the
Straight Talk Express created. It was McCain, in those days, who the
media seemed to be infatuated with.” And the interest did not wane in
the years after the election as McCain became one of the best-known
fixtures on the media circuit.”
But those days are
long gone; so is an unbiased press.
And no one knows this
better than soon to be seventy-one year old, John McCain, who would also like you
to know that Gray Matters. Not just the gray to be found in the center
where fairness and balance live, but also the kind found on the heads of
the seasoned, that silver medal of age earned during a lifetime of
fighting for truth, justice and the American way.
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