Today is Primary Day in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont. And what I’ve noticed lately is that the media has become a third party to the campaigning. I don’t mean in the regular sense that reporters have been sharing information through various news channels about what is going on.
I mean that the media have been the subject of various talking heads’ tirades about candidate exposure. This morning, for instance, conservative Laura Ingraham commented that the media had given Barack Obama a free pass. She said that he had not been suitably vetted, so that the public could determine his true qualifications.
I’ve also heard criticism of the media’s handling of Hillary Clinton, but truthfully I’ve not heard comment about the media’s handling of John McCain. Why is this?
I have a sneaky feeling that the conservative wing of the Republican Party is setting up the media as a fall guy in case McCain loses the November election. The scenario in my head runs like this: The media favors liberals. The Democratic nominee is a liberal; therefore, logic suggests the media favors whoever is the Democratic candidate. This means the Republican candidate won’t get the press he is entitled to. So if he loses, it will be the media’s fault.
It’s clever, and — if we lived in a totalitarian society — it could be true. But, since we live in America, what could also be true, regardless of November’s winner, is that the public actually voted for or against a candidate regardless of media exposure.
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