Are The Media Biased In Favor Of Obama?

W. has been flagging articles purporting to show the media are biased in favor of Obama, like this one:

Asked to rate the three major cable news channels in the latest survey, sizable percentages say the coverage on both CNN and MSNBC is biased in favor of Obama. Where Republicans overwhelmingly see bias, Democrats see no bias. Even Democratic voters, however, do not say either of these networks favors McCain.

I reply with articles like this one:

So was the reason for the media's negative treatment of McCain that notorious "left-wing bias"? Not according to the study's findings. Pew attributes the press's blistering coverage of McCain in part to the candidate's poor response to the economic crisis and his attacks on Obama's character. The report also concludes that the findings "offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begets winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions. Obama's coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well."

Here is one new conspiracy-type theory - it's The Aging Editors. Michael Malone at ABC writes:

Malone, it turns out, has the usual litany of complaints: Why isn't the press interviewing Obama's drug dealer? Why aren't they staking out Bill Ayers' home? What's up with Joe the Plumber? Etc. Kinda tedious. But if you make it to the end, there's comedy gold when he finally explains why the media is so in the tank for Obama. The reason, it turns out, is because the press is run by a bunch of fifty-somethings working in a dying industry:

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe — and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway — all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself — an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.