Live from DC: It's Inauguration Weekend (Plus a Media Bias Bonus)

Hey friends and non-friend readers, let me know if there's any boots-on-the-ground info you'd like from my 'hood 5 blocks from the Capitol. I'm hoping to make it out for a few events this weekend, at least to watch from a safe distance. At the very least I expect to be able to catch then-former President Bush's departure from the east plaza of the Capitol, which is just a stone's throw away. For some reason I'm thinking the crowds will be thinner on that side of the dome.

And now for the real purpose of this post. Here's an old but hysterical article from the Washington Post back in campaign season. The gist of the article is that research confirmed that Fox News election coverage was harder on Obama and more positive on McCain than MSNBC. No big surprise there, right?

Well here's the kicker. Look at the actual research numbers.

Nearly three-quarters -- 73 percent -- of MSNBC's reports on McCain were deemed negative, compared to 57 percent in the media overall. Just 14 percent of the channel's Obama stories were negative, compared to 29 percent in the rest of the media. In the week of Sept. 8, when McCain was enjoying a post-convention bounce, MSNBC's negative stories on the Republican nominee outweighed positive stories by more than 7 to 1.

At Fox, 40 percent of the coverage of Obama was negative, while 40 percent of the McCain coverage was negative. That amounted to rough parity within the Fox universe, but the network was significantly harder on Obama and easier on McCain than others in the media world. Fox was also more favorably disposed toward Sarah Palin, with 37 percent of its stories positive, compared to 28 percent in the media generally.

Did you catch that? "That amounted to rough parity within the Fox universe, but the network was significantly harder on Obama and easier on McCain than others in the media world." So in other words, while Fox was equally critical of both candidates, MSNBC ran more than five times as many negative stories on Obama than McCain. But Fox had a pro-McCain bias because they weren't as pro-Obama and anti-McCain as everyone else.

I didn't like either candidate, and I didn't vote for either one. But this kind of myopia, intellectual bankruptcy, and complete lack of objectivity is simply astonishing.

P.S. Sorry you have to look at that picture of Keith Olbermann. Not much I could do about that.