On Media Coverage

From a column by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz:

"The Pew Research Center says: "The American public is more likely to say the press has been too critical of President George W. Bush in his last days in office than to say the same about coverage of President-elect Barack Obama. About three-in-ten (29%) see coverage of Bush as too critical, while just 11% see coverage of Obama that way. Still, a plurality (41%) says press coverage of Bush has been fair, while a substantial majority (61%) says the same about coverage of Obama. About one-in-four find coverage of both not critical enough."

"There are clear partisan divisions: 62 percent of Republicans say the press has been too critical of Bush, compared to--yes--12 percent of Democrats. And while 37 percent of GOPers say the press hasn't been critical enough of Obama, 11 percent of Democrats feel that way."

This reminds me of all of the stories showing that the press coverage of McCain's campaign was too negative, and thus, the media must have had a liberal bias.

See, for example, this piece on Time's Mark Halperin.

This is very frustrating. Regardless of your perspective on the elections, you have to admit that John McCain ran a bad campaign and not just because of the obvious fact that he lost (good campaigns win, bad campaigns lose).

From the selection of Sarah Palin as his vice president to allegedly "suspending" his campaign to address the economic crisis to not showing up for an appearance on David Letterman, the campaign made a lot of mistakes.

It would be amazing (and truly disconcerting) if such a poorly run campaign did NOT receive negative coverage in the media.