Washington Post Admits Obama Bias

Well now that the election is over there is no harm in admitting that your nationally acclaimed newspaper was biased for a political candidate.

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

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But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

The Post had good coverage of voters, mainly by Krissah Williams Thompson and Kevin Merida. Anne Hull's stories from Florida, Michigan and Liberty University, and Wil Haygood's story from central Montana brought readers into voters' lives. Jose Antonio Vargas's pieces about campaigns and the Internet were standouts.

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.

The Washington Post, and all most all of the media outlets in this country, let the American people down. They failed to report on every major issue regarding Obama, and by extension, Biden. If Sarah Palin said that America would be tested by its enemies in the first six months of a McCain presidency, the media would have been all over it. Biden mixes up Lebanon and Libya, Hezbollah and Hamas, and the media doesn't blink. McCain mixes up Sunni and Shite and the entire media claims he knows nothing about world religion. The double standard was incredible. Not only Obama's relationship with Rezko, but his relationship with Ayers and Reverend Wright were poo pooed by media cadre all to happy to worship at the Obama altar. Does anyone really think that if the LA Times had a damaging video of McCain at a dinner for a known associate of Yasir Arafat, former PLO spokesmen, toasting him and laughing at derogatory jokes against Jews, that the video wouldn't be all over the media?

The Washington Post needs to not only admit its problem, but to set up safeguards to ensure that this does not happen again. I am not saying that an editorial board cannot endorse a candidate. But the media must remain objective and impartial. To skew the results of an election by unfair and unbalanced reporting is tantamount to ACORN organizing voter fraud -- oh and where was the unbiased reporting of that issue in the Washington Post?