Journalists Who Don't Even Try to Hide Their Bias

The Washington Times ran an interesting tidbit the other day about those right-down-the-middle objective journalists who covered the second presidential debate at Hofstra University a few nights ago.  This is how the story began:

“The room set aside for reporters to watch Tuesday night's debate erupted into applause after President Obama ridiculed the size of Mitt Romney's personal wealth.

Mr. Romney was trying to make the point that both his and Mr. Obama's investment funds probably include investments in China — something the president has attacked Mr. Romney for.

“‘Mr. President, have you looked at your pension?’ Mr. Romney said.

“‘You know, I don't look at my pension. It's not as big as yours, so it — it doesn't take as long,’" Mr. Obama retorted. His reply prompted laughter in the debate hall where the two men were squaring off — but across the way in the separate room where the press was stationed, a brief round of applause broke out.”

Reporters who cover baseball games aren’t allowed to cheer for their team while in the press box.  It’s just not tolerated.  Even journalists who dwell in the world of sports know that reporters aren’t supposed to take sides.

But here we are – not at a baseball game – but at a presidential debate and the reporters are clapping for their guy.  Memo to so-called mainstream media:  Umpires can’t root for one of the teams.

As for the president:  He’s never come right out and said “Romney is a rich bastard who doesn’t care about regular folks and would just as soon see them die, if he could make a few bucks off of it.” But he’s come pretty close.

He’s made Romney’s wealth a major issue in the campaign, trying to turn Romney into the little guy with the monocle on the Monopoly board – a plutocrat not only hopelessly out of touch with everyday Americans, but someone who is so insensitive that he’d shut down a steel mill and not care one bit when its workers lost their medical insurance and the wife of one of them died of cancer.

Remember that ad by a Super Pac supporting the president?  The one that left out the fact that the worker’s wife had her own job and her own medical insurance?  And that she died seven years after Romney left Bain Capital, the company that shut down the unprofitable mill?

And Team Obama’s relentless attacks on Romney as that heartless rich guy were taking a toll.  Most Americans didn’t know much about him and as much as we say we don’t like negative ads, they work.  Romney, remember, was trailing in the polls for much of the campaign.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election: the first presidential debate.

That’s when 70 million Americans got to see Mitt Romney unfiltered – with no Obama attack ads to get in the way and with no supposedly objective journalists to distort the picture of Romney either.  And now, according to Gallup, Romney is leading Obama nationally by six points.

This is the same MSM, remember, that gushed over candidate Obama’s overseas trip four years ago, and was relentlessly negative about Romney’s supposedly gaffe laden overseas trip this year.

This is the same MSM that blasted President Bush for signing the Patriot act and locking up terror suspects at Guantanamo – but when President Obama extended the Patriot Act and broke his promise to shut down Guantanamo, what we mostly got from the press was silence.

This is the same MSM that ran Page One stories about Romney’s dumb stunts in high school, but has shown no curiosity about Obama’s years in college.  Why are his records under lock and key as if they were gold at Fort Knox?  We don’t know and the media don’t care.

Oh yeah, and this is the same MSM that cheered in the press room when Barack Obama took a shot at Mitt Romney’s wealth at the debate the other night.  Good thing those reporters weren’t covering something really important, like a ball game.  They would have been kicked out of the press box.