The Media’s Panderbears, Part I [Updated]

[See Part II. ALSO: The important update is at the end of this story.]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is nothing short of a “dereliction of duty” by the Fourth Estate. Compare and contrast the infrequent calling out of Barack Obama from CNN’s Lou Dobbs (whose show follows panderbear Wolf Blitzer) …

… with the “can I get you a pillow?” love-in of Barack Obama, via Newsbusters:

In the February 23 Saturday Night Live parody of journalists in the tank for Barack Obama [SEE THE VIDEO], a reporter at a debate oozed: “Senator Obama, are you comfortable? Is there anything we can get for you?” Ending a taped interview Thursday with the real Obama, a real journalist, ABC anchor Charles Gibson, seemed to match the concern for Obama’s personal comfort expressed in the SNL caricature:

Senator, you’re kind to take the time, on a day when you legitimately should be able to simply just take long naps. I thank you. All the best to you.

In the segment aired on ABC’s World News, Gibson empathized with Obama’s plight as a victim of Hillary Clinton’s attacks and seemed to regret how Obama may have to go negative as he prodded him: “To fight back, do you have to do the same? In other words, do you have to, in effect, show some toughness in all of this, greater than you have so far?”

Next up: “Politico’s Allen Tells Jann Wenner to ‘Get a Room’ With Obama” …

“Now comes Mike Allen of the Politico. In his Playbook column of this morning, Allen offers this quote from Jann Wenner’s over-the-top endorsement of Obama in Rolling Stone”:

We have a deeply divided nation . . . A new president must heal these divides . . . Like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama challenges America to rise up, to do what so many of us long to do: to summon ‘the better angels of our nature.’

Allen’s suggestion to Wenner in reaction to his breathless prose: "Get a room!"

This to a man who famously left his wife and is now in a relationship with a male partner with whom he has a son.

Insert here the outraged reaction from the MSM, the gay community and the Obama campaign if a conservative commentator had made a similar suggestion.

– From Mark Finkelstein’s column at Newsbusters.

Bill Maxwell, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), has been commenting on the media bias against Hillary Clinton. His latest column is “Media tainted by anti-Clinton bias“:

For a brief period last week, earnest members of my chosen profession, the press, did a little soul-searching and asked if we have been, and are, biased against Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The conclusion: Of course we are. Any journalist who denies this fact is unable to recognize objectivity if it were branded on his eyeballs.

I am not referring to opinion writers, who are expected to bring their personal perspectives and slants to issues and events. I am talking about editors and reporters charged with delivering a product the public can trust as truth and fairness. (For the record, though, most pundits, conservatives and liberals, also show bias against Clinton.)

If Clinton had not raised the issue and if Saturday Night Live had not spoofed journalists for fawning over Sen. Barack Obama, like puppies licking their owners’ mouths, the charge of bias probably would have remained a mere wink-and-nod charade.

The charge of bias picked up more credence when Clinton fundraiser Walter Shorenstein, founder of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, sent a memo to Democratic Party superdelegates criticizing media coverage of Clinton and Obama.

Shorenstein wrote: “The stakes are so high – for our security, our economy, our health care, our future and our country. … Is it in the country’s best interest that voters received far more information about Hillary’s laugh than Obama’s legislative record?” …

Read all of “Media tainted by anti-Clinton bias.”

And here is an A.P. story on the now-famous Shorenstein memo:

Walter Shorenstein, a prominent San Francisco-based real estate developer, Democratic fundraiser and longtime supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, penned a memo to Democratic party “superdelegates” and other activists criticizing media coverage of the presidential campaign. [...]

… In his memo, Shorenstein concurred with the Clinton campaign’s assessment.
“I am absolutely outraged with the media coverage of the presidential campaign,” Shorenstein wrote in the memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

“This is the most important election in my long lifetime, and to quote one of my favorite movies, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’”

He was quoting the 1976 movie “Network,” in which a mentally disturbed television news anchor played by Peter Finch went on the air and implored viewers to rebel against gimmicks staged by network news executives.

“There is too much on the line for the media to ignore important issues while they obsess about Hillary’s hairdo or Barack’s baritone,” Shorenstein continued. “Is it in the country’s best interest that voters received far more information about Hillary’s laugh than Obama’s legislative record? Is it good for our nation that more attention is paid to the differences in their speaking style than their health care plans?”

Shorenstein attached several studies to the memo indicating the press had given more favorable coverage to Obama than to Clinton, and urged activists to forward the material to friends and voters and to complain to reporters. …

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At least there’s some “hope” that some of the media — particularly that “across the pond” — is digging into Obama’s past and present connections:

In today’s “Is Rupert Murdoch’s reporter sniffing out Obama pal Tony Rezko?,” TorontoLife’s Douglas Bell reports:

“Filed under ‘W’ for ‘what a weird coincidence’, a reporter close to the scene at the Tony Rezko trial (overseen by the same judge who handled the Conrad Black matter, Amy St. Eve) told me last week.” Bell quotes the reporter:

I ran into James Bone outside Amy St. Eve’s overflow courtroom, who filled my head with his assessment that Rezko is some sort of international (Middle East) bagman who is a much more significant figure than Chicago or other media realize. And here I thought Rezko’s significance pretty much had to do with raising money for Obama, having dinner with Obama, and helping (a bit) when Obama bought his house.

Adds Bell:

James Bone, you might remember, is the famously dogged and ferocious reporter for the Murdoch-owned London Times assigned to the Conrad Black trial. ..

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UPDATE on HOW THE MEDIA REALLY OPERATE:

The dirty little secret of the press corps: the low-status, grubby, blue-collar reporters care about facts and doing their job; the upscale, elite media care about their own status in the pecking order and identify with the preening private school candidate.

SEE THIS IMPORTANT NEW ARTICLE FROM THE NEW REPUBLIC:
“Out of the Tank”
.