John McCain has been crying foul a lot lately about Barack Obama being the media favorite, that McCain is getting the short end of media coverage. Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central:
The coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates ...
Before going after the media on imbalance of coverage, McCain may want to first make sure his own house is in order, as the cliché goes, and look at his own media allies. I took a tour of six of the most prominent Republican/Right-wing websites and was taken aback that the six sights were all rife with imbalanced coverage of the two presidential candidates - in favor of Obama! McCain is being ignored at his own websites!
I went to the front political page of each website and performed a search for the last name of each candidate and counted the number of hits. Obama had more hits at every site, as follows:
Republican National Committee ...................................................... 6 - 1
Yes, the RNC mentions its flagbearer once on its front page.
Note ironic "The Media Is In Love" valentine whining about
favoritism of Obama in automatic slideshow at top of page.
Townhall.com ................................................................................. 32 - 13
Obama is in top three searches at bottom right of front page;
McCain is not. Sunday morning lede: "A Media Crush on Obama"
Fox News – Politics ........................................................................ 12 - 9
First Obama hit Sunday morning: "FOX News Poll: Does Obama
Get Better Treatment by the Press?" Featured top video as of
Sunday morning: "Idol Worship: Does media love assure the
presidency?"
The Weekly Standard - The Blog ...................................................156 - 24
That is not a typo: 156 – 24 - they are going nuts
on Obama having to cancel his visit, blaming Obama of course.
"It’s not just a job - it’s an obsession."
RedState ....................................................................................... 53 - 30
Also taking Obama to task over cancelling troop visit.
National Review Online ................................................................. 28 - 1
Obama almost tosses a shutout at NRO.
NOTE: These were the search results as of early Sunday morning. The figures will likely change over time, but I suspect the trend will not.
Saying the Republican noise machine is paying a lot more attention to Obama than McCain obviously ignores the fact they are doing this because they have nothing positive to say about McCain and are panicking at Obama pulling their pet foreign policy issue right out from under them - on a McCain/Republican dare at that. No one is surprised they have settled on a strategy of attacking Obama 24/7.
Even so, McCain has no right to complain about the regular media ignoring him when his own noise machine has become so openly obsessed with bringing Obama down and is so bereft of positives about their own candidate that they ignore him even more than those they accuse of playing favorites.
Jon Stewart discusses McCain’s lonely lament about midway through this video to the strains of "All By Myself." The contrasts with Obama’s Germany tour de force from the first part of the clip are hilarious.