The media coverage of this Presidential election has certainly been interesting, but the question on everyone’s mind is – has it been fair? After all, the media controls the news. The nightly newscasts by the “amiable” Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson, once the most influential resources for world news, are seen by millions every night. Before television, newspapers had a stranglehold on the market controlling everything people read. These mediums provided total editorial control over what was considered “newsworthy”. Today however, the internet plays a much more prominent role.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that... practically any media organization is biased.

With the advent of blogs and personal websites, an individual can scour the net to get reactions from millions of people. The internet provides a haven for people to share their views without having to deal with real life. For that reason, it is much more common for individuals to be much more critical on the internet. People can rebut, support or refute anything that happens in the mainstream media. But is this new medium making an impact?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that media organizations like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, FoxNews, ABCNews, CBSNews, CNN and practically any media organization are biased. The Politico, a major American political journalism magazine, recently admitted to it. John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei ,The Politico’s editor-in-chief and executive editor respectively, said, “OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.”

A meta-analysis done by the Pew Research Center found that the media’s coverage of each Presidential Candidate was also biased. Stories covering Obama were positive 36% of the time and negative 29% of the time. 35% of the stories on Obama were neutral or mixed. John McCain on the other hand had 57% of the stories decidedly negative with only 14% being positive. Clearly you can see the distinction.

What about the individuals in these media organizations? Again, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei fill us in: “Based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess - nothing so scientific as a Pew study - that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election.”

So what makes a story “newsworthy”? Who can decide that? Who should decide that?

Think of all the scandals that John McCain has been involved in over this election cycle. He called Obama “that one”, was a part of the Keating Five (in 1989 mind you), skipped out on The Late Show with David Letterman and chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. (The media loved that last one.)

Now think of all the scandals Barack Obama has been involved with. There’s Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Samantha Powers, Tony Rezko, ACORN voting fraud, Joe the Plumber’s “spread the wealth” response and Joe Biden’s countless gaffes.

Yet McCain’s coverage is overwhelmingly negative?

The issue arises not always in how the issue is reported, but on if the issue even gets reported in the first place. With regards to Barack Obama, it has become clear that the press is in the bag for him.