Halperin 'Apologizes' For Media Bias

Mark Halperin from Time has the grace to be just a leetle embarrassed over the blatant media bias this election :

"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.

Of course, it wasn't just the New York Times, was it Mark? How many flattering articles and cover appearances on Time did Barack Obama receive as opposed to ...uh, what was the name of the other guy running?

Like most enablers, Halperin's supposed apology was more in the line of a justification:

The former ABC News political director acknowledged that some of the press coverage was simply reflecting the reality of Obama's presidential campaign.

"You do have to take into account the fact that this was a remarkable candidacy," Halperin said. "There were a lot of good stories. He was new."

Yes..and Sarah Palin was new too, wasn't she? Somehow, I don't recall the same sort of coverage for her.

I wonder, could part of the reason Obama's candidacy seemed so remarkable is because the press gave in to its innate bias with a will and scripted it that way, ignoring anything critical?

Halperin is in a unique position to know.While he was political news director at ABC news, he issued instructions to his reporters telling them to concentrate on criticism of George W. Bush and ignore or downplay anything critical of Democrat John Kerry..just a week before ABC's Charlie Gibson would be selecting questions for and moderating the second presidential debate between Bush and Kerry.

Speaking of justification disguised as an apology, here's one of Halperin's co-conspirators:

New York magazine's John Heilemann, one of Halperin's co-panelists, offered another reason for all the positive press coverage Obama received.

"The biggest bias in the press is towards effectiveness," said Heilemann, who is authoring a book on the 2008 race along with Halperin.

"We love things that are smart."

You mean like Joe Biden? Like Jeremiah Wright and the 57 states?

I'd appreciate if you boys from the press room would just own up. After all, you got what you wanted, and I can do without the mea culpas. The vast majority of you have no professional ethics and your Leftist bias rules in all cases. Regardless of how smart or effective or new someone is you simply can't be depended on to report news honestly or to live up to even the basic requirements of fairness when a conservative is involved. And by doing so, you betrayed one of the most important pieces of our Republic,a free and independent press.

That worked out well for you this election cycle, but the times are changing. Only the most gullible will ever trust what you have to say anymore.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.