Bob_Grip's Blog

I have to admit, I read the Reuters article twice before I believed what I was reading.

The story by Paul  Bond read in part:

In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election.

The cable news channel is "completely out of control," said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat.

She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

Bloodworth-Thomason, one of President Clinton's biggest supporters, was criticizing MSNBC for being out of control?

It got better.

"We should stop the demonizing," she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. "It diminishes us," she said of her fellow Democrats.

Whoa.

The internet has been full of stories of reporters wincing over journalists calling the election before the polls have closed. 

Michael Malone posted a story on abcnews.com called "Media's Presidential Bias and Decline".  He said in part:

...nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

That is, except for Joe Biden, who apparently thought the job of reporters is to ask softball questions.  (See my last blog entry).

American's collective memory is short.  That's why reporters need to think back to the last Presidential election, when their exit polling on election day even had John Kerry thinking he was about to be President.

As Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'til it's over".  We should report the news, and not try to predict it.