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How well are the U.S. news media covering the 2008 presidential campaign?  Is the coverage accurate and fair?  Does it focus on the issues?  Media commentator Paul Janensch gives us his assessment.

I’m talking about news providers that don’t take sides, so that leaves out opinion magazines and most Internet blogs as well as the Fox News Channel, which shills for the McCain-Palin ticket, and MSNBC, which shills for the Obama-Biden ticket. Generally I think the mainstream media – print, TV, radio and the Internet – are doing pretty well.

John McCain’s team is quick to charge bias when a story casts the Republican ticket in an unfavorable light.  I thought they had a point, though, when they denounced one front-page story in the New York Times. It suggested, without firm evidence, that McCain once had a romantic relationship with a lobbyist. Otherwise, the McCain camp’s complaints against the Times and others are just working the ref – meaning they want a reporter or a news organization to favor them the next time just to prove there is no bias.

Once again the news media are being criticized from all sides for devoting too much coverage to the “horse race” – who is leading and by how much.  Well, the horse race is important, as long as the issues are not ignored, and they haven’t been ignored. If you care about the issues, you can find out where the candidates stand through special reports in major newspapers, on TV newscasts and on public radio – and their online subsidiaries.

I especially appreciate the fact-checking reports that examine claims by the candidates in their speeches and ads and point out distortions and falsehoods. A recent report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said that since the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the coverage of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative but that the coverage of McCain has been substantially negative.  Does this mean that journalists have been rooting for Obama?  

The report said not necessarily. When Obama was dropping in the polls, his coverage tended to be negative. When he began to rise, the coverage became more positive. When McCain was gaining on Obama, his coverage was more positive, but it turned negative after so much attention was given to the financial crisis and he started to fall behind.

In other words, said the report, winning in politics begets winning in news coverage.

Media commentator Paul Janensch is a former newspaper editor who teaches journalism at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.