TIME's Mark Halperin: 'Extreme Pro-Obama Media Bias A Disgusting Failure'

Politico:

Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 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."

Read the whole story: Politico

Comments

[amcg50]

Mark Halpern is just a "not so" Happy guy!

[iPolitics]

Two words: Reverend Wright.

[stateretiree]

How many weeks did we have to hear about Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers??? I would believe that those in the media claiming a bias for Obama must have voted for McCain!!

[CheshireCat2]

Zogby did a poll about the least informed voters. It featured Democratic voters who were clueless.

[Moka11]

I did my own poll just watching McCain/Palin rallies that featured Republican voters not only misinformed but childish, fear-mongering plumbers that weren't even plumbers.

[CheshireCat2]

Don't even go there. You bought the baloney that Halperin is talking about here.

[keepemhonest]

CheshireCat2,

You must be talking about the poll zogby did for rightwinged radio host John Ziegler.

The same poll that John Zogby, Pres & CEO of zogby, said, "“This was not Zogby International’s finest hour,” he said. “Something, somehow, fell through the cracks.” He said he would review the incident with his staff on Friday to determine what went wrong.

In the poll Zogby posed 12 questions to 512 people who "claimed" they voted for Obama voters on election day, then ran the results this week on its site with the sub-headline “Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden.”

The press release said, "80% of Obama voters knew that Palin had a pregnant teenage daughter and was the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe, and that McCain was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. Meanwhile, more than 80% didn’t know unflattering facts about Obama, such as his successful efforts to have opponents removed from the ballot in his first political race and his comments that critics have interpreted to mean his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry."

[keepemhonest]

To Mark @ Time:

Sorry dude, facts don't add up to media bias ... that dog just don't hunt.

[keepemhonest]

Obama's campaign, darn near flawless ... yes, flawless. Obama ran the kind of campaign American public has been STARVING for, clean, not dirty. Hence, Obama got "good press"

McCain/Palin did NOT get negative press, their negative campaigning got highlighted in the media, as it should be.

* Is it neg. press to report McCain/Palin rallies called t hreats to Obama?
* or point out malicious lies Palin told daily,
* or McCain's Campaign PAID ghost writers to write letters-to-editor in support of Palin.
* or scrutinize JoeNonPlumber holding press conferences agreeing Obama would mean the demise of Israel,
* or McCain's crazy halt/nonhalted campaign,
* or Palin never trying to calm her mobmental rallies,
* or election law violations for spending 150K on Palin's family wardrobe,
*or McCain wanting cancel 2nd debate,
*or McCain saying he'd bring JoeNonPlumber to DC if he won,
* or CindyMcCain REALLY STEALING DRUGS from charity SHE formed to get high,
* or McCain's failure to pay taxes on LaJolla home 5straight years,
* or Wasilla BANKRUPT AFTER Palin was mayor,
* or only 100,000 Alaskans voting Palin to be governor,
* or Palin -poster child for high school drop outs who condoned future son-in-law & daughter dropping out of High School,
* or Palin LIES about Obama's record &Obama's associations,
* or Palin staff arguments,
* or McCain's dysfunctional campaign,
* or ALL lobbyists running McCain's campaign,
* or McCain was such a weakling he was NOT even allowed to pick his own VP?

[CheshireCat2]

You illustrate Halperins' point to a "'T"

[SoD1]

Actually, factual rebutting would be more fitting!
Halperin's 'conclusion' : ""I think it's incumbent upon people in our business to make sure that we're being fair. The daily output was the most disparate of any campaign I've ever covered, by far."
is the classical pseudo-intellectual attempt to justify hiding all those issues – issues that are most deciding for the Voters in evaluating the sanity and the competence of to-be leaders - factors keepemhonest listed above here - from the general public, while all the intentional medial-orchestrated lies about Obama are not equally condoned.
Hmm, makes his “conclusion' and his entire Book pretty much pro-republican and pro-stupidity biased to me!
As it is an interesting but by now totally ineffective way of moving the American People's mind to scrutinizing the, as every one knows, non-existing "Liberal Media" bias argument that such pseudo-scientifically and pseudo-intellectual “reverse-using” enabling clowns as Halperin makes.
He and is colleges are the usual conservative fools and his Book will be judge as just few unrealistic conservative cronies saying foolish things they do not even have the brain power for.

[keepemhonest]

CheshireCat2 - I get it, you & Halperine think the "People do NOT have a right to know." That's interesting because the ONLY reason the press was granted Constitutional rights was because our founding fathers thought democracy was built on "the People's RIGHT TO know."

You see, Cat, The people's right-to-know is embedded in our Constitution. When the current Constitution was adopted on June 2, 1784, the accountability to the people of the people's elected representatives and appointed public officials was established in Part 1, article 8, which read:

All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and at all times accountable to them.

Perhaps you & Halperins should move to a country where they suppress the truth from the people.

[UrbanRevolution]

PART II - All they talked about was the urban myth of a bradley effect. And who Obama could not count on to put him in the white house. Of course they were wrong wrong wrong. But never mind that. No, Halperin, when you strip away the faux analysis is calling our President an affirmative action President. Which in the truest since of the word is no bit deal. After all my mother and father got their first jobs in the entertainment industry because of affirmative action. Only people of color WITH COLLEGE DEGREES could get hired. Whites didn't need the degree. But you know affirmative action got them in the door. Of course today affirmative action means unqualified. And that's what Halperin is talking about - that Obama is unqualified. He's also giving us the foreshadowing of what's to come. If Halperin grades Bush as a C, Obama will only need to make 1 mistake to get the same grade-- betcha dollars to donuts that they grade him harder than any president in modern history.

[bighillaryfan]

The following site has been reporting on this for months. And now the media just catches on? The HuffingtonPost still hasn't caught on.

http://theliepolitic.com/2008/11/cbs-60-minutes-obama-mccain-i-am-barrack-i-approve-this-message/

[UrbanRevolution]

PART I - I agree with the DFutureisNow. However, I'll submit another theory. Let's just forget about Fox News, and the terrorist fist jab and somebody's baby mama, and the madrassa, and mammy statements (i could go on and on with those) Let's take Fox out of the picture and let's assume that Halperin is right in his assessment. Perhaps what we were seeing is atonement. Just as a lot of African Americans found vindication in OJ getting off. Vindication for all of the Emmett Tills of this nation. The 100s of thousands of black men, women, and children who were falsely accused to perpetuate forced free labor after the emancipation. And if that is the case, who's fault is that? Is it President Obama's fault that there could be a case of white guilt? NO. Just as Jewish people will never let us forget about the German holocaust we will never let people forget about the American holocaust that legally lasted until WWII and technically is still going on. As dirty as most of these politicians are, as stained as their hands for shaking hands with the devil and selling their souls, never have I seen more guilt by association than in this campaign. I had this woman tell me that she couldn't vote for Obama because Michelle and her brother pronounced their titles as my sistah and my brotha. What did the media do to eliminate racial fears? NOT A DAMN THING.

[Jules1]

Mark, get a life, no one cares what you think, why? because you think wrong, just go away!!

[clearthinker2008]

This guy has drunk the whole pitcher of koolaid. There has been several studies saying that the media ran more negative stories concerning Obama than McCain or Clinton.....so, whatever.

[4real]

The media has been more proBush than proObama. They repeated EVERY rightwing talking point about Obama and tried to raise EVERY possible question and suspicion about Obama that they could think of.

Bush's failure to catch Bin Laden...pass
his starting another war without "winning" the first....pass
his lying about going to war...pass
torture...pass
spying on americans...pass
katrina...pass
wall street getting drunk...pass
high gas prices...pass
economic meltdown....pass

Bush was given a free ride for the past eight years while they were all over Obama from day one.

[PallinAround]

Yep, yep, yep -- you are correct. Now THAT'S disgusting.

[spiderbucket]

ANYONE with any sense at all would have to praying to God for the GOP to lose for the sake of the country !

[Soundofthunder]

My favorite part of his tantrum is citing TWO articles about the prospective first ladies as ironclad proof of bias favoring Obama. Yup yup, case closed, folks. Someone wrote mean things about the beer fortune debutante’s pill popping, while another person wrote only nice things about the black woman without a checkered. What IS this world coming to?

SOT

[Soundofthunder]

"a checkered past." Otherwise, someone might think I mean a shirt or skirt.

SOT

[Big0725]

He claims bias as the terrible way Cindy McCain was treated. They never mentioned that she's a wonderful mother to her children. Well, Mr. Halperin, they never mentioned her drug and theft problems either, so I guess that's a wash. I barely heard anybody in the MSM mention The Keating 5 fiasco either.

Your a irrelevant as your magazine Mr. Halperin.

[stateretiree]

Did they mention the fact that she was an adulteress, who took the husband of a woman that was seriously ill??