A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds a majority of voters, 55%, believe media bias is more of a problem than big campaign contributions.
Rasmussen found the usual partisan and ideological divide:
Republicans are the most likely to see media bias as the bigger problem. Eighty-one percent (81%) of the GOP faithful hold that view. Democrats and unaffiliated voters are more evenly divided. Obama’s Party, by a narrow 50% to 41% margin, say that campaign cash is the bigger issue. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 47% say media bias is the problem while 43% hold the opposite view.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of liberals see campaign contributions as a bigger problem than media bias. Seventy-four percent (74%) of conservatives hold the opposite view. Among the moderates, 49% say media bias is the problem while 42% disagree.
My esteemed RedState colleague, absentee posted a fine write-up about the conference call fight a bunch of reporters had, on behalf of Obama, with Senator Jon Kyl and McCain's senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann:
The call was regarding a small dust-up with the Obama camp over a statement Senator McCain made on the campaign trail yesterday. "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks."
The Obama campaign is making this out to be a significant error in the facts.
[. . .]
Most of the questions on the call related to, and excessively used the phrase "verb tenses." Reporters pressed for an admission of guilt, and the campaign firmly continued to point out that the underlying point Senator McCain made was fundamentally correct: that the surge has worked, and that as a result, surge troops have been assigned to return home.
Scheunemann made the excellent point that Senator Obama claims this kind of politicking is obsolete, that it is more important to focus on the heart of an issue than the superficial tit for tat of campaigns past. Yet here he is, sending out John Kerry (John Kerry, Senator? Seriously?) to latch onto "verb tense" to try and paint McCain as not in possession of the facts about Iraq.
Still, the point was pressed again and again. And again. Verb tenses. Verb Tenses? Verb Tenses! Verb tenses?! Verb. Ten. Ses. The press seems eager to join the Obama campaign's point of view, which basically amounts to "nevermind about the surge, what is today's date?"
I wasn't going to add my two cents to this, but I can't get over my impression of just how far the mainstream media reporters went to support Obama in this conference call fight.
For example, because Kyl and Scheunemann, defended McCain, Michael Dobbs decided to give the campaign three Pinocchios.
I've been on many campaign conference calls during this election and this is the first time that I found any mainstream media reporter to be as disrespectful or as darn right insulting as I did Mr. Dobbs.
Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press was able to ask polite questions and write a balanced article. So did Scott Helman. I don't understand what got into Mr. Dobbs.
I also wonder why it required dogged attention from bloggers, before Mr. Dobbs decided Obama's Auschwitz "error" merited any mainstream media coverage. And why the mainstream media still, after more than five years, says nothing about Obama's Treblinka "error."
I'm fond of referring to the mainstream media as the biased media wing of the Democrat Party, but still.
The paper's effort to diminish Feith's book began two weeks ago when Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung wrote a hit piece on Feith's book without waiting for the book to be released or bothering taking the time to read the unedited manuscript of an embargoed book of some 528 pages less than six hours before they managed to obtain less than six hours before they went to press. It seems a little unethical that Ricks and DeYoung forget to mention that they both have books being sold, books which take a bit of a different view of things than the three Post writers' versions of what is contained in Feith's book.
I feel at least as qualified as DeYoung, Milbank or Ricks to write about Feith's new book. Even though, like the three of them, I have not yet read War and Decision. At least I took the time to talk to Feith about the book and his experiences before writing this. Earlier today I was fortunate enough to participate in a conference call with Doug Feith and other bloggers including some RedState colleagues. As Pejman Yousefzadeh posted, we engaged in an interesting hour-long discussion about the book.
One of my colleagues attended the book launch event the Center for Strategic and International Studies ("CSIS") held for War and Decision, last night. Like Feith, my colleague reported that Mibank's article bore little resemblance to what actually occurred during the book launch. You don't have to take their word for it or my representations about what they said. CSIS has posted a video, or if you prefer, an audio file of the event, so even though you weren't there you can watch or listen to the event and draw your own conclusion.
As for Millbank's article, just note that reviewers, who have actually read War and Decision, give it high praise:
At the National Review, Larry Di Rita calls it "a reference publication:"
Feith draws on countless internal documents, many of which were intended for, written by, or debated among members of the president’s Cabinet, the most senior advisers to Cabinet officials, and the president himself. Feith has performed a public service by taking the time to present these documents, which have gone through the painstaking process of official declassification, in nearly 600 citations that are reproduced online with links to full texts, transcripts, and presentations. (To pick another insider account by comparison, George Tenet’s At the Center of the Storm offers, well, zero documents, citations, or footnotes).
[. . .]
In grasping the importance of this book, it’s crucial to understand the current state of the Iraq-war literature — a genre largely created by journalists, who bring to the task the same rigor and sourcing found in daily news stories (which is to say not much). Tom Ricks, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Bob Woodward, George Packer, Michael Gordon, and others have created a narrative arc that relies upon the insights of civilian and military actors willing to air their opinions, insights, grievances, and point papers with reporters eager to give them a hearing.
[. . .]
War and Decision sets a high standard for official memoirs that will follow. It is fair enough for other officials to take issue with Feith’s conclusions, and some have, but these criticisms are blunt until they can rely on documentation as rich as Feith’s. The press wrote the first draft of the Bush administration and the War on Terror, but Feith’s book relegates it to the recycling bin.
At the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens liked Feith's book for its myth busting:
"War and Decision" offers many more such examples where perceptions of the administration's conduct collide with the reality of it. Much to Mr. Feith's credit, however, his book is no apologia, even for those he obviously admires. Of Mr. Rumsfeld, he notes that "his style of leadership did not always serve his own purposes: He bruised people and made personal enemies." As for President Bush, Mr. Feith argues -- rightly, in my view -- that his problem was not that he "discouraged challenges" but rather that he showed "an excessive tolerance of indiscipline, even of disloyalty, from his own officials."
Washington Times columnist, Frank J. Gaffney Jr. calls the book "extraordinary:"
In contrast to previous books and memoirs on the subject published to date, Mr. Feith's is not aimed at self-promotion or self-vindication. Neither is it an effort to settle scores with those who have, in some cases viciously, attacked the author in their own screeds.
Rather, it is the first attempt by a serious student of history to lay out the myriad, challenging choices confronting a president who, within eight months of taking office, witnessed a devastating attack on this country and resolved to prevent another — possibly far more destructive one.
As mentioned in Larry Di Rita's review, Feith has also set up a companion website to the book, where you can access copies of many of the documents referred to in his book.
Michael Leahy's Washington Post temperamental hit job on Senator McCain shows just how fickle the mainstream media wing of the Democratic party can be.
Coverage of Leahy's hit job, ignores Senator Lieberman's downplaying McCain's temper and focuses instead on former senator Bob Smith's, made for television, negative campaign sound bite:
"Does he get angry? Yes," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who supports McCain's presidential bid. "But it's never been enough to blur his judgment. . . . If anything, his passion and occasional bursts of anger have made him more effective."
Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."
It isn't until twenty-something paragraphs later that Leahy reveals that Smith admits to not liking McCain, and mentions that Smith has held a grudge against McCain from the time they both served in Vietnam, some forty years ago. Smith can obviously hold a grudge a long time.
In the following video Fox News' Carl Cameron describes the inaccuracies in Leahy's attack on McCain, highlighting Smith's allegations:
That's right, Cameron reports Smith said that what is reported in the Leahy article "never actually happened."
One has to wonder if the mainstream media, which admittedly suffers from Obamania, would even consider writing a similarly negative story about Obama. If a reporter did write such a story, would it get the same front-page treatment as Leahy's hit piece, or even worse, the New York Times' "journalism by innuendo" slanderous hatchet job on Senator McCain.
John Fund offers some thoughts that get right to the point in explaining why:
While John McCain is popular with reporters, they have clearly chafed as they see him adopt more-conservative positions on taxes and immigration in the past year. His coverage is much less favorable than it used to be.
But Mr. Obama, who sports the most liberal voting record of any senator according to the nonpartisan National Journal, has avoided much criticism of that record by implying that any conventional critique of his issue positions represent the tired politics of the past. If he had his way, questions about character and questions about issues would be off-limits.
The mainstream media only seems to take on Obama after nonpartisan fact checkers and an army of bloggers point out egregious "distortions," "rank falsehoods," "seriously misleading," statements and "outright lying" from Obama. How long will the American electorate allow the mainstream media to get away with this lack of even-handedness -- giving Obama a free ride while publishing hatchet jobs on McCain? Enough is enough.
Rasmussen reports finds that 56% of voters nationwide disagree with Obama’s statement that people in small towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Only 25% agree with Obama and 19% are not sure.
Rasmussen confirms what many of us have been saying -- this is a bigger problem for Obama in November:
Partisan and ideological differences suggest that the comments are more likely to be a factor in the General Election than in the Primaries. A plurality of politically liberal voters—46%--agree with Obama’s statement while 33% disagree. Moderate voters take the opposite view and disagree by a 51% to 27% margin. Seventy-four percent (74%) of conservatives disagree with Obama’s statement, only 12% agree.
Democrats are fairly evenly divided—34% agree with Obama and 43% disagree. Generally, Obama supporters agree with him while Hillary Clinton’s supporters disagree.
Republicans overwhelmingly disagree with the statement and unaffiliated voters disagree by a two-to-one margin.
Voters under 30 are evenly divided on Obama’s statement while their elders strongly disagree. Fifty-three percent (53%) of African-Americans agree with Obama’s statement while 29% disagree. White voters disagree by a 3-to-1 margin.
Forty-five percent (45%) say that Obama’s comments reflect an elitist view of small town voters. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree. Republicans overwhelmingly say that the statements are elitist and most Democrats disagree. Among unaffiliated voters, 40% say they represent an elitist view while 34% disagree.
This poll also confirms that Obama is winning the PR battle by keeping the main stream media focused on the "bitter" and "frustrated" part of his San Francisco comments rather than the part that offends small town America "[T]hey cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations:"
Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters agreed with Obama’s statement that “People are fed up. They're angry and they're frustrated and they're bitter, and they want to see a change in Washington.” Just 32% disagree. Most Democrats and most unaffiliated voters agree with Obama on this point. Clinton’s campaign initially challenged Obama’s use of the word “bitter” but quickly changed its focus to the more controversial aspects of Obama’s statement.
The main stream media's coverage favoring Obama's talking points is further evidence the main stream media is still suffering from its admitted case of Obamamania.
This is so pathetic. The New York Times holds a story for months, endorses McCain to be the Republican Presidential nominee, and when he becomes the presumptive nominee the so-called newspaper publishes a gutter story implying that Senator McCain has engaged in some sort of impropriety.
