The dean of D.C. press corps' column yesterday was headlined "What We've Learned About McCain," but it's not clear "we" were watching the same campaign. After paying tribute to McCain's heroism, his "backbone," his "patriotic impulses," and on and on, Broder got down to supposed lessons-- McCain didn't manage his relationship with a wounded GOP, for example. And then this (emphasis added):

McCain was handed a terrible political environment by the outgoing Bush administration--a legacy of war, debt and scandal that would have defeated any of the other aspirants for the nomination. But because McCain could not create a coherent philosophy or vision of his own, he allowed Obama and the Democrats to convince voters of a falsehood: that electing McCain would in effect reward Bush with a third term.

The David Broders of the world do not accuse politicians of lies or "falsehoods" very often, so it's truly revealing that he thinks that it is not just unfair but an outright deception to link Bush to the candidate whose voting record has overwhelmingly been in lock-step with the Bush White House over the past two years, who famously reversed his opposition to the Bush tax cuts and other policies that deviated from Republican orthodoxy, and who won his party's nomination in part by arguing that he was very similar to Bush.

And Broder adds:

The campaign has been costly in terms of McCain's reputation. He has been condemned for small-minded partisanship, not praised for his generous and important suggestion that the major-party candidates stump the country together, conducting weekly joint town hall meetings--an innovation Obama turned down.

Yes, that is curious. People seem to have judged McCain based on the conduct of his campaign, and not on some non-existent townhall meetings.

Corporate media economics reporters' knee-jerk repetition of the "free trade" moniker has pushed things to the absurd point that Dean Baker is forced to ask (10/30/08) on his Beat the Press blog, "What Does It Mean to Support 'Free Market' Economics?":

New York Times readers no doubt asked this question when they saw that Charlie McCreevy, the European internal market commissioner, was identified as "a supporter of free-market economics." What does this mean? Did Mr. McCreevy oppose the bank bailouts? Is he opposed to copyright and patent protection? Or did the NYT just mean to tell us that, like almost everyone else, he is not a supporter of Soviet-style central planning?

Baker thinks "it would be useful if reporters could get beyond clichés and try to ensure that their characterizations of individuals actually provide information to readers."

In his Altercation blog at Media Matters, Eric Alterman (10/28/08) points out the difficulty in critiquing the New York Post: It's hard to tell whether the paper is being offensive or idiotic.

Steve Serby in the New York Post: "Good for Tom Coughlin. Good for Coughlin for tightening the noose around Plaxico Burress."

Burress, a receiver for the New York Giants, is black, and his coach, Tom Coughlin, is white. Al Sharpton is on the case. I don't know what to say--it is the Post, which makes both atrocious prose and rancid racism equally plausible.

This sort of thing goes back a long way; see FAIR's magazine Extra!: "New York Post: Militant White Daily" (1-2/93)

Hosting FAIR communications director Isabel Macdonald on his religion radio show State of Belief (10/25/08), Rev. Welton Gaddy raised the issue of corporate televangelist Pat Robertson's "really significant role in aiding and abetting Islamophobia." Macdonald pointed out how

Robertson made some of the most outrageous comments about Muslims and Islam, and in addition to his broadcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network, he also appears regularly on Fox News as a guest. And he has called Islam a "bloody, brutal type of religion," has referred to Muslims as being linked to Satan on-air. He has made repeated extraordinarily racist and offensive remarks about Muslims.

Gaddy talked "about how these attitudes show up... when newspapers use terms like 'Islamic terrorism' instead of just 'terrorism.' Or... the use of the word 'Islamofascism.'" Macdonald pointed out the double standard:

In the mainstream media, we hear repeated references to Muslim terrorists, whereas we don't see references to Christian terrorists, if you have a group that says they're taking the word of a Christian god as a rationale for bombing an abortion clinic, for instance.... I think it's really playing out noticeably in this election in which we have this campaign to portray Obama as a Muslim, and we know it's not true--these are false rumors. Normally, if you had a campaign that was portraying a politician as being secretly a member of a religious group, you would not expect the first reaction of the press just to be to correct that information. You would also expect them to raise questions about why this tactic was being used--and to raise the issue of bigotry and prejudice that is central in this kind of a campaign like the one we've seen to portray Obama as a Muslim.

Check out FAIR's special report: Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation

Over at Conde Nasté Portfolio (10/29/08), Jeff Bercovici does a good job busting National Review writer Byron York for trying to "defend the focus of the political press on questions such as whether Obama was in church when Rev. Jeremiah Wright said 'God damn America.'" York had argued that "this kind of lament that we don't spend enough time covering policy issues is displaced.... [Voters] put it all in the Cuisinart and they come up with their vote, and I don't have a problem with it."

Bercovici says he thinks York

doesn't have a problem with it, that is, when Democrats are the victims of such coverage. In his opening remarks, York blasted the New York Times for a recent report suggesting that McCain is a distant husband who didn't know about her painkiller addiction and forgot to buy her birthday gifts.

Bercovici goes on to address the question, "Are most journalists liberal?":

Overwhelmingly, as Slate illustrated yesterday in a poll of how its employees plan to vote. Of the site's 57 staffers and contributors, 55 are voting for Barack Obama, versus one for John McCain and one for Bob Barr. That's consistent with research showing journalists donating money to Democrats over Republicans at a ratio of 15 to 1.

On the other hand, just because journalists favor a candidate privately doesn't mean they'll pull punches in their coverage. Without a doubt, the piece of reporting from this election cycle most damaging to Obama was the disclosure of his remarks about small-town voters being bitter--and that came from the ultra-liberal Huffington Post. Politico considered all the angles yesterday and concluded, "Of the factors driving coverage of this election--and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama--ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil."

Leaving aside Politico's ideas about what might constitute ideological favoritism, the story about individual journalists voting Obama ultimately has the same flaw as the (rather more dubious) one "showing journalists donating money to Democrats over Republicans." To wit (as stated by Eric Alterman at the time): The

story is misleading because its primary assumption is that journalists determine the content of the news. I think it would be a lot more useful... to report on, say, the political contributions of the General Electric Co. that owns NBC and MSNBC, which, I would argue, is a great deal more influential than any journalist's particular feeling. Ditto the Walt Disney Company, Viacom and of course Fox. (Rupert Murdoch has admitted, publicly, that he deployed Fox, et al., in support of Bush's war in Iraq.)

See Extra!: "From the Top: What Are the Politics of Network Bosses?" (7-8/98) by Jim Naureckas

The Associated Press (10/29/08) does its usual sad job trying to fact-check candidate statements--this time working a hefty dose of neo-Hooverism into the mix.

AP's Calvin Woodward charges that

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.

For instance, Woodward responds to Obama outlining his economic proposals by noting: "His proposals--the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more--cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year." The unspoken assumption here is that because the country is in the midst of a financial crisis that has incurred huge bailout costs, the federal government will need to cut spending or raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit.

This economic analysis is quite controversial, to say the least--economist Dean Baker (10/9/08) says this approach "make[s] about as much sense for the economy as nuking Silicon Valley." If Baker is too progressive for your economic tastes, here's conservative Martin Feldstein arguing that "the only way to prevent a deepening recession will be a temporary program of increased government spending." Yet AP presents deficit-cutting in the midst of a recession as it-goes-without-saying common sense.

The only support that Woodward provides for his claim that Obama's failure to offer an austerity program as a response to the economic crisis means that he is being "less than upfront" with the voters is this passage:

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says... "Neither candidate's plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified."

The Tax Policy Center report in question (9/15/08) provides no elaboration on this rather peculiar economic advice. The conventional wisdom is that tax cuts and spending increases stimulate the economy, whereas tax increases and spending cuts tend to slow it down; if AP has discovered evidence to the contrary, that should be the headline--it's bigger news than a mere Obama infomercial.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald (10/29/08, ad-viewing required) takes apart a "sentimental, cringe-inducing retrospective from the Los Angeles Times' campaign reporter Maeve Reston, wistfully lamenting the loss of affection and friendship between John McCain and the reporters who cover his campaign--what she twice calls 'intimacy.'" Deeming the piece "an instant classic in illustrating how campaign reporters think and behave," Greenwald tells how

Reston blames herself, at least in part, for the loss of friendship between McCain and his reporters. Back in July, with a couple of other reporters, she approached him at the back of his "Straight Talk Express" bus, when "as always McCain warmly motioned for us to squeeze in beside him on the couch." She then committed a terrible sin: She asked The Maverick a question--whether he "agreed with his adviser Carly Fiorina's recent statement that it was unfair for some health insurance companies to cover Viagra but not birth control"--which, as a long-time opponent of health insurance mandates, he was visibly uncomfortable answering and to which he was unable to provide a coherent response, resulting in a video that was widely used by "liberals and late-night comedians" and which was "embarrassing" for McCain.

In short, "she breached the core agreement between McCain and his reporters--access and friendship in exchange for positive coverage--which is also, by the way, the flagship principle of the modern American journalist generally."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Press Corps' Unshakeable Crush on McCain: Some Straight Talk About the Media's Favorite 'Maverick'" (5-6/08) by Peter Hart

Economist Dean Baker is the highlight of a Politico feature (10/29/08) asking several political commentators the question, "Is the press really biased against McCain or does poor coverage reflect the reality of his campaign?":

No one would expect Saddam Hussein to get good press. The reality is that he was a pretty bad guy and objective reporting would show this. While the analogy is overblown, the fact is that Senator McCain supports policies that are really bad for the vast majority of the American people and has run a terrible campaign.

At the most basic level, he had been an eager supporter of the one-sided regulatory policy that allowed banks free rein to take risks with the taxpayer dollars under the "too big to fail" doctrine....

His tax policy would almost exclusively benefit the richest 1 percent of the public, and his healthcare plan seems as though it was designed by the insurance industry. His whining about Obama's ties to terrorists and questioning of his patriotism would do Joe McCarthy proud.

While arguing that "objective reporting would show Senator McCain in a really bad light," Baker asserts that, "if anything, he has benefited from affirmative action in reporting, because the media feel obligated not to paint such a negative picture of a major party candidate."

Read FAIR's recent Media Advisory: "Ayers = Keating?: Media Falsely Balance Obama, McCain Attacks" (10/10/08)

Interviewed for the online magazine Guernica (10/08), religion journalist Jeff Sharlet remembers what John McCain "spiritual adviser" John "Hagee got in trouble for"-- "saying that Hitler was just doing what God wanted"--but says what Doug Coe," as "the Family's unofficial leader," has said is much more monstrous." While writing The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Sharlet found a

government source tell[ing] us: "The Family totally circumvents the State Department and the usual vetting. If Doug Coe can get you some face time with the president of the United States, then you will take his call and seek his friendship. That's power." But it’s not power operating in the usual sense. When I talk to conventional reporters, they...say, how many votes does The Family control? Well, it doesn’t control any votes. It would never tell anybody how to vote.... They usually try to have a hand in both sides. It’s something that Americans are really uncomfortable with: It's ideological influence. It has consequences; they are shaping the terms of the debate, and I think that in the long term that becomes a lot more powerful.

Addressing why so few are familiar with this powerful element in U.S. politics, Sharlet says that "the lack of media attention is a deference to establishment power in American life. [Former Barack Obama pastor] Jeremiah Wright is an outsider," but "Doug Coe? Everybody’s met him. When you talk to him, he doesn’t seem that crazy, he doesn’t come up to you and say, hey, let me tell you about Hitler."

This is the tease for tonight's O'Reilly Factor:

• New Gallup poll shows McCain gaining ground. Karl Rove, Dick Morris and Dennis Miller weigh in.