Wordy Wednesday: The Media's Greed vs. the Public's Needs

Whoever wins the presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008, it won't be the American people.

If Barack Obama wins, he will have been done a grave disservice by the national media. Rather than focusing on his qualifications, background and record, the media has chosen instead to concentrate on the size of the crowds, his demeanor when debating and how he's managed to tie his Republican rival, John McCain, to the current unpopular president.

When I say that the media has done Obama a disservice, I mean it, regardless of how strange it may sound. Eventually, if he's elected, the true nature of his economic policy will emerge and exacerbate the financial crisis, his naïveté regarding foreign affairs will become glaringly apparent and the ghosts of his past will inevitably find their way into the federal government. Obama will, of course, be responsible for enacting the faulty policies, but the media's failure to examine them closely before the election will be the ultimate reason why he was in a position to implement them in the first place.

And Obama can't be blamed for that. He's just doing what he needs to do -- trying to win an election. It's the media's job to provide objective insight into the candidates seeking office. When the media is focusing its attention on Sarah Palin's wardrobe or Joe the plumber's tax status, they're not looking into the candidates' stances on the issues. Americans rely heavily on the media to ask legitimate questions, not mocking ones, so they can make sound decisions and choose the candidate who best represents their ideology.

Instead, the media has turned this election into a cheap popularity contest, the kind of campaign high school students run when they're seeking the office of student council president. No matter how hard the McCain campaign tries to focus on the issues that separate him from Obama, the media seems bound and determined to turn it into a circus side show.

Not only has the media failed to raise issues about things like the staggering amount of special interest money that has poured into the Obama campaign, they've actually sat on stories or failed to release key elements of stories that could enlighten voters about the policies and background of a man who many people hadn't heard of until two years ago.

And if McCain wins, the rhetoric against him from bitter media pundits will be extraordinary. A fair shake would never be extended to a President McCain from strong-willed commentators because he simply would not be their president of choice. For eight years, the media has pounded on Bush, assigning blame to him for things he deserves, but assigning much more blame to him for things he doesn't.

Yesterday, I watched in amazement as CNN's Jack Cafferty completely belittled Gov. Palin, saying that when the Republican Party nominated her as its vice-presidential candidate, "evangelical Christians shouted 'Hallelujah,' while the rest of the country laughed out loud." Today, I watched in frustration as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, one of the network's many openly liberal talk-show hosts, rolled her eyes and smirked derisively as she attacked the McCain campaign. While FOX News has often been accused of leaning heavily right with hosts like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, they at least attempt to balance their opinion commentators with those of an opposing view.

NBC is by far the worst of the networks when it comes to any kind of bias, and the ratcheted-up liberal rhetoric that has deluged its viewers during the campaign might have a motivation many of us may have missed -- because no media outlets have reported on it to any significant degree.

NBC Universal is planing to cut another $500 million from its next yearly budget, despite recently-released strong quarterly reports. The cuts are the result of the recent market turmoil that has hit the media sector particularly hard as stock prices for many major conglomerates are plunging to all-time lows (as much as 70 percent for the past year). The result is that NBC Universal stations are facing a serious local ad slump while its parent company, General Electric, is facing financial problems with heavy reliance on financial services in an environment of frozen credit.

So, how does this explain why NBC and MSNBC have gone so far left during this presidential campaign? Easy. With Obama spending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in advertising, NBC is going to do whatever it can to soak up that revenue. By tilting its hand to the McCain campaign in any way -- even if it means being fair -- NBC risks losing that revenue share. Likewise, by addressing as many of Palin's shortcomings as it can, the network meets the critical need of having to cover the popular Alaska governor, while balancing its fiscal objective at the same time.

What's particularly troubling about this is that the national media is extremely competitive. If Rachel Maddow's ratings go up (regardless of the reason), objective news outlets begin to question their own news budgets (that's media lingo for "story lists") and begin to slant their own news. This kind of "trend" is the fundamental problem with a 24/7 news cycle.

Hopefully, at the conclusion of this election, the national media networks will reevaluate their coverage and realize by the next presidential election that fair and balanced reporting may not be sexy, but it's what people want. For years, I've kept CNN on nearly 24 hours a day. It's always been my go-to news network. But over the last three months, I've witnessed a slow, deliberate and very methodical drift to the left.

Thus, as these final weary days of this very brutal campaign wind to a welcome close, I'm finding it easier than ever to just turn the whole thing off. I can honestly say that I've never been more ashamed to be a working journalist.