Time Journalist Calls Out NYT's "Extreme Pro-Obama Coverage"-"Time Magazine journalist Mark Halperin ripped contrasting NYT profiles of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama (both written by Jodi Kantor, pictured) as his prime examples of slanted campaign coverage. Time Magazine journalist Mark Halperin thinks his colleagues were guilty of “extreme pro-Obama coverage" during the 2008 campaign, and the New York Times came in for particularly detailed criticism.
"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."
Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.
"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."
The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.
Americans Still See Media as Biased After No Abortion Coverage in Election-"Another new poll finds a strong majority of Americans still see the news media as biased and they are increasingly turning to the Internet for news. That's no surprise given a recent study finding the mainstream media failed to cover the issue of abortion during the presidential elections.
A Zogby Poll, commissioned by IFC, found 72.6% believe the news they read and see in the mainstream media is biased.
Although there is a partisan divide on the intensity of the feelings that the media is biased, a majority of both parties hold the view. Zogby found 88.7% of Republicans and 57.5 percent of Democrats describe the news media as biased.
When it comes to determine the most reliable source of news, 37.6% of those asked consider the Internet the most reliable, with 20.3% saying national television programs and 16 percent saying radio news is the best.
When asked to name which television network provided the most unbiased news, 39.3% of those surveyed trust FOX News most for the issues they consider most important, followed by CNN with 16% and MSNBC with 15%."
