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It's easy to forget equitable in what manner "tick tight," as Rather once oblige it, the primary race was between Obama and Hillary Clinton. It ended up with a vote gap of just one tenth of a percentage point. The real difference-maker in the 2008 race was the Obama favoritism of the general media, led by the television networks. It was his brink of triumph.

Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center spent weeks crunching numbers from any exhaustive investigation of ABC, CBS and NBC coverage of Barack Obama, from his first network soundbite in 2000 through the end of the primaries, a study of more than 1,300 stories. "Coverage" is too bland a word. "Anointing" might be else appropriate.

Obama received his best press when it mattered the most. How could someone with his utter lack of national expertise and behalf identification appear to become an yesterday night heavyweight? The networks showered praise on Obama because his convention keynote speech in 2004. Out of 81 integral stories with regard to Obama from 2004 up to the time when his official kickoff in 2007, not one was a negative story, critical of him. Not one.

Overall, the three broadcast networks gave Obama nearly seven times more good press than bad press. There have been 462 determinate stories (34 percent of the total) compared to just 70 stories (or five percent) that were negative. The rest were classified as neutral. "NBC Nightly News" was the most aggressive, with 179 Obama-boosting stories, compared to just 17 negative ones, a 10-to-one margin. "CBS Evening News" was toward considered in the state of bad, with a 156-to-21 gap between indisputable stories and negative ones.

When network reporters went looking for voters to parley, there was no trial exerted to achieve balance. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78 percent) were pro-Obama, compared to blameless 28 (19 percent) that were negative, by the remaining five offering a mixed opinion. Obama wasn't winning primary elections over Mrs. Clinton by a 78-to-19 percent smackdown, but he clearly won the Average Joe soundbite primary.

Network reporters not only accentuated the clear, they tried to eliminate the negative. Look at labels. The networks minimized Obama's free-hearted ideology, but referring to him in the manner that a "liberal" 14 times in four years (many of those came in 2004). In contrast, reporters found twice as manifold occasions (29) to refer to Obama as a star during the same period, whether he was a "rock star," "rising star" or "superstar."

The networks also downplayed or ignored what could have been major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama's relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in righteous 15 other reports. CBS played it from a thin to a dense state in just part of a story, through reporter Dean Reynolds insisting "not at all one has charged Obama through wrongdoing, something he has been animate to single thing out." No one cared very much that a political fixer headed to bridewell had helped Barack Obama buy his pricey house in Chicago.

CBS and NBC also initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama's longtime shepherd Jeremiah Wright, but excessively praised Obama's March 18 speech in succession race relations, his response to the Wright furor. The networks ran minute-long soundbites complete with family pictures. Liberal and conservative pundits alike came on TV and honored the Obama address as a historic moment.

What of Wright's again outrageous claims, such as the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the U.S. rule invented the AIDS virus as part of a plan to eliminate the fiendish race? Rev. Wright appeared on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" in succession March 1, 2007, but it took the networks each entire year to but also mention his name. By the lifetime ABC ran its first vicious Wright soundbite, 42 states and D.C. had already voted.

When the convention starts in Denver, viewers might want to step into their india-rubber hip boots and wade end all the sugary goo. The nominee will be compared to Moses, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Tiger Woods before it's all through. We can only imagine how monstrously upset they'll be that the Republicans dare to assemble and oppose their beatific ghost.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by means of other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web boy-servant at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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