Media coverage of the 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses is a disgrace. And that goes for many political blogs as well as more mainstream media–in particular,CNN, which seems as if it has an exclusive contract to promote Barack Obama. Maybe CNN figures he’d make a pretty good co-anchor alongside Anderson Cooper one day should he fail to get the Democratic Party nomination…..Something CNN and others seem to be going out of their way to make sure he does.

This is not about partisan politics. It’s not really even about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Rather, it is about fundamental fairness.

The coverage of Obama has been breathless. Yes, of course, there is something novel about the possibility that an African-American may be elected President of the United States. And, there is always the appeal of the new and fresh.

But, the writers,producers,anchors and reporters who cover politics are supposed to be professionals. That’s why they get the big bucks.

Instead, what has happened is an almost Kremlin like manipulation of coverage so that even the smallest of gains by Sen. Obama are portrayed as major victories contributing to his “momentum,” while, at the same time, larger accomplishments by Sen. Clinton are either downplayed, derided or ignored.

Take the Flordia primary. True, for the Democrats, it was what is known as a “beauty contest” because no delegates were up for grabs thanks to a punishment handed down by Democratic Party officials because Florida moved up its primary date despite party opposition.

Nevertheless, more than 1.5 million registered Democrats came out to vote for the three major candidates..and Clinton beat the crap out of Obama in terms of the number of people who voted for her instead of for him or former Sen. John Edwards.

And yet, the media-CNN in particular again-downplayed this “win” by Clinton saying it was not a victory for her because no delegates were at stake.

What a mockery of what Democracy is supposed to be all about. The last time I checked, in a free society, when one person gets more votes than another in an election, that person’s win is,without doubt, a victory.

My guess is, had the situation been reversed and Obama beat Clinton in the Florida vote, CNN and others would have played it as : “The momentum for Obama grows!” or something silly like that.

Even on the Republican side, the press seems to have decided that John McCain is going to be his party’s candidate whether voters agree with this or not.

When it comes to Obama, I do think the mainstream media are backing him out of a sense of redemption: Let’s face it, most newsrooms in this country, even in 2008, look like white social clubs, with a sprinkling of minority faces to create the illusion that true integration has occurred when, the fact is, for the most part, it has not.

Most decisions at major newspapers, television networks and radio news programs are still made by white men.

When it comes to Obama, it is almost as if there is collective guilt going on here and backing an African-American candidate must seem like a nifty way of saying to the world : “See, we’re not racists after all!”

Much has been made about new media…blogs…and some of the biggest advocates of blogs have claimed that they would serve as a check against the hackneyed reporting of more mainstream news organizations.

That is not what I see! Rather, most political blogs seem to just repeat and amplify what the main stream media have already reported.

This is shaping up to be one of the most interesting presidential elections in recent U.S. history. Too bad we don’t have an unbiased media to report on it.