A Slobbering Love Affair:
The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media
by Bernard Goldberg

Bernard Goldberg, 28-year veteran of CBS News and author of Bias, writes that 2008 was "the year the mainstream media finally jumped the shark." What most observers-even 62% of Democrats and independents-couldn't fail to notice, Goldberg has now chronicled: the media's strong bias toward Barack Obama and belief that electing their favorite was nothing less than a "righteous crusade."

Goldberg quotes liberally from big names in the press, such as Chris Matthews: "If you're in [a room] with Obama, you feel the spirit moving." "If you're actually in the room when [Obama] gives one of his speeches and you don't cry, you're not an American." And even this: "I felt this thrill going up my leg."

To alarming anecdotes, Goldberg adds hard data. Within ten days in October and November, the New York Times ran 14 pieces on Sarah Palin's wardrobe. In the previous two months, the Times had run only two stories on Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground terrorist with whom Obama worked and associated for years.

During six crucial campaign weeks, 73% of MSNBC's stories on McCain were negative, according to the impartial Project for Excellence in Journalism. Only 14% of stories on Obama were negative. On FOX News, the network Keith Olbermann called "worse than al Qaeda" and "as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was," 40% of stories on McCain were negative-and 40% of stories on Obama.

In fact, in the mainstream, "No revelation was too shocking, no association too extreme, that Obama, and his media amen chorus, would not bury it, ignore it, or explain it away." The New York Times declared that Obama's "religious connection with Mr. [Jeremiah] Wright…should be none of the voters' business"-differentiating this from a "political connection." "The distinction seems especially urgent," said the Times, after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state."

The Rev. Wright story became a "template," writes Goldberg, for the media's response to any potentially damaging story on Obama: "Minimize it, praise Obama for his candor, claim all questions have been asked and answered, and attack those who persist in asking questions as over-the-top partisans."

Goldberg closes by arguing the importance of a press we can trust. The media have destroyed their own credibility, and "it's not just journalistic ethics that are at risk-democracy is."

(Regnery Publishing, 2009, 184 pp., $25.95)