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Oh, that librul media strikes again...
During the bruising Republican primaries, there was one candidate whose coverage was more relentlessly negative than the rest. In fact, he did not enjoy a single week where positive treatment by the media outweighed the negative.
His name is Barack Obama.
That is among the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington nonprofit that examined 52 key newspaper, television, radio, and Web outlets.
“Day in and day out, he was criticized by the entire Republican field on a variety of policies,” Mark Jurkowitz, the group’s associate director, says of Obama. “And he was inextricably linked to events that generated negative coverage”—including rising gas prices, the ailing economy, and the renewed debate over his health care law.
In short, while the president was being hammered on both fronts, his message was somewhat drowned out by the volume of news coverage surrounding the GOP candidates.
Surprise! The media doesn't seem to want to offer up "balanced" coverage, do they? They don't want to inform their audience that the president has little to do with rising gas prices, or that the economy is in fact recovering, albeit slowly, or that there are massive lies constantly flung by Republicans over the health care law. No, it's much more interesting to cover the Republican primary as a horse race and to uncritically regurgitate Every. Single. Republican. Talking. Point. without bothering to fact check or place it into context.
And that's why Democratic voters cannot take this election for granted. The media -- by abdicating their jobs -- have muddied the waters. They have made this race far closer than it should be, for their own purposes. And while Obama is nowhere near the progressive hope that some may have thought him to be in 2008, there is no question that the alternative is far, far worse.
Not that the media will ever admit that.
