The media are massively biased towards Obama. The real problem is obsession with opinion polls

Telegraph [UK] ^ | 10/2/12 | Tim Stanley

[Evil Slayer]

The Republicans aren’t worried about Romney performing well in Wednesday’s debate. They're worried about how the mainstream media will choose to report it. The bias has got so bad that Barack Obama could come on drunk in a peephole bra and many journalists would still label it a triumph (“A historic performance” – Chris Matthews). Incredibly, some journalists are reporting an Obama victory before the debates have even happened. Perhaps the Prez shouldn't show up at all and just leave Romney to talk policy with an empty chair. MSNBC would call it for the chair ("Never in my lifetime has a piece of furniture so perfectly articulated our hopes and aspirations" – Lawrence O'Donnell).

This past week, the Right has been building a big portfolio of media misinformation – culminating in Paul Ryan’s complaint that the press refuses to “tell our story”. But that’s not the media's job. However, there is evidence of some networks fabricating stories that put Romney in a bad light, all the while failing to dish the dirt on Obama. And as America’s foreign policy was unravelling in the Middle East, many outlets were fixating on Mitt Romney’s comments about the 47 per cent of Americans that don’t pay federal income tax.

Does all this amount to out-and-out bias? Not in the crude sense that reporters only break away from their copies of Das Kapital to type up White House press releases. On the contrary, studies have shown that Obama gets more negative headlines than Romney (for good reason, the cynic might snigger). And very often what conservatives regard as prejudicial reporting is actually factual reporting. For example: it is a fact that Mr Romney's campaign is run very badly indeed.

If the mainstream media is guilty of anything, it’s being seduced by narrative. Political journalism...

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