Is the press in the tank for Obama?

The news media in these final days of Election 2008 is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, they’re convinced that Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, has a lock on the presidency. What’s more, the vast majority of reporters are captivated by the historic nature of his candidacy.

Obama arrives on the scene at a time of intense national turmoil — two wars, a Depression-like economic slump, the meltdown of one of our two big parties — AND he would be our first African American president.

That, my friends, is a big story.

But journalists are also deeply conflicted about the appearance (and possible reality) of bias.

Are they “in the tank” for Obama? Is John McCain, the Arizona Republican, getting the journalistic shaft.

In a column today, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz says yes: reporters are effectively measuring the drapes on Obama’s behalf. Here’s the money quote.

So much for the formality of next week’s election. Many pundits and publications seem so certain of a big Democratic win that they’re exploring the intricacies of an Obama administration and whether the party will have a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate.

“If the mainstream media are wrong about Obama and the voters pull a Truman, that is going to be the end of whatever shred of credibility they have left,” says Tobe Berkovitz, associate dean of Boston University’s College of Communication.

If Kurtz — and the McCain campaign — are correct, then the media’s credibility is already shot.

You can’t be an extension of the Democratic National Committee and still be a journalist, even if you’re right about the outcome.

But other journalists say this simply isn’t so. John Harris and Jim VandeHei at Politico.com argue that coverage of McCain is negative because his campaign has been a disaster.

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

My opinion?

For what it’s worth, I think journalists have done a better job this election cycle than ever before.

They’ve probed weak spots in both candidates’ records; but they’ve also felt liberated to challenge false and absurd assertions.

The McCain campaign has asked America to center much of the campaign coverage on questions about Obama’s legitimacy. In a nutshell: Is he one of us?

But accepting that basic narrative as THE story of the 2008 wouldn’t have been “balance.” It would have been unconscionable.

Instead, reporters pushed both candidates to talk substantively about the issues that face America — a fair and honest debate that McCain’s staff tried unabashedly to curtail.

The McCain campaign has also asked journalists to ignore the fact that their operation has functioned erratically, even sloppily.

We know factually that some of the key decisions that faced their candidate, including the choice of a running-mate, were made hastily.

As a consequence, a large number of Republicans and conservatives have disavowed Sen. McCain’s effort.

That’s news.

The bottom line is that this wheel will turn. Democrats will nominate someone soon who will run a far clumsier campaign than we’ve seen this year from the Republicans.

And when journalists see that blood in the water (whether its blue blood or red blood) they’ll come running.