Barack Obama, the Boston Herald and the First Amendment

Richard Nixon was accused- with some justification- of paranoia where his political opponents were concerned. He had an actual enemies list, for crying out loud.

Ronald Reagan was accused of wrong-headedness on everything from arms control to fiscal policy.

George W. Bush was accused of being responsible for everything from introducing a neo-conservative snake into the Garden of Eden to the Fall of Rome to arranging in advance for the Japanese typhoon.

But I have a feeling we'll wait a long time before hearing equal indignation from the liberal media over the Obama administration denying White House access to the Boston Herald, which is what passes for a conservative paper in that politically benighted city. The paper's sin: too prominent a display of a guest op-ed piece by Mitt Romney, the front-runner to oppose Mr. Obama in next year's presidential election.

The Boston Herald. is not intimidated.

The decision by the exceptionally thin-skinned White House press office brings to mind the Obama administration's unprecidented war against Fox News a while back (Nixon didn't like the media, but even his administration's distain for CBS never reached the levels of the Obama administration's targeted animus toward specific media outlets).

A 1985 survey of newspaper reporters by David Shaw of the liberal Los Angeles Times revealed that 55 percent of American newspaper journalists described themselves as "liberal" (12% "very liberal," and 43% only "somewhat liberal").

The media's self-reported voting history tells an even more exaggerated story of liberal bias. The following chart tells a rather interesting tale:

Other surveys of journalists tell the same story. 1980 seems to have been something of an aberration; 51% of journalists voted for Jimmy Carter, 24% voted for John Anderson, and a whopping 25% voted for Ronald Reagan. The Reagan "magic" continued among journalists four years later, when Walter Mondale received "only" 58% of their vote, compared to a breathtaking 26% for Reagan. But in 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis received 76.1 percent. In 1992, 89% voted for Bill Clinton.

52% of journalists reported voting for John Kerry in 2004. 19% said that they voted for George W. Bush. 21% refused to answer.

33% identified themselves as Democrats. 10% self-identified as Republicans.

Two seperate polls revealed that the media's bias in favor of Obama over John McCain was so obvious that vast majorities of the public recognized that journalists as a group wanted Obama to defeat John McCain in 2008.

And those things being the case, one has to ask the same question with regard to the print media which the administration's vendetta against Fox News in the face of the overwhelmingly pro-Obama, left-wing bias of CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and ABC raised with regard to TV news: even if it be granted that right-wing bias is operating in one particular case, why make an issue of single conservative drop in the liberal ocean ?

After all, it's not as if it were even anything close to "equal time!"

HT: Drudge and Media Research Center