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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

This is a short ( five page) editorial on ABC News site, from 
multi-generational journalist:
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"The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election 
campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. " ...

"But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first 
time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a 
living."....

"You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people 
who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As 
family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in 
Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to 
help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the 
first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though 
profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his 
life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful 
freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat 
reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family 
business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his 
drivers license." ........

" Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, 
many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep 
into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions 
and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten 
my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating 
procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in 
almost every small town paper in the U.S."...........


"No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the 
lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively 
serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, 
D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del. 

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the 
United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper 
trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire 
years missing out of his biography. 

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, 
it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative 
media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has 
systematically refused to do so. ".........


 

*****Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. 
He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning 
with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech 
reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as 
The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was 
a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's 
largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com 
boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the 
best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public 
television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS 
miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the 
ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.