Columnist: Media love affair with Obama may backfire

Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in Time magazine, says the over-the-top rooting for Barack Obama by the mainstream media could end up costing the candidate some votes.

The American public knows the media is dominated by liberals and a backlash could be coming if voters believe the media is force-feeding an Obama presidency down their throats.

Ponnuru writes:

The silver lining for McCain is that the media's bias has sometimes backfired on liberals. One reason gun control and abortion have repeatedly been land mines for Democrats is that reporters never issued any warning signs. The press has long underestimated the political risks in liberalism. Obama's Reverend Wright fiasco was a case in point. Even though the two men had close ties, the press gave little scrutiny to the radical preacher for a year after Obama's campaign began. When attention finally came, Obama gave a speech that tried to shift the focus from their relationship to the rest of the country's racial wounds. He was rewarded with rapturous coverage. The next day, the New York Times ran a "news analysis" calling the speech "hopeful, patriotic [and] quintessentially American" and comparing him to John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. It took a few more weeks for Obama to realize that he had to take the final step and repudiate Wright.

Read the full column, "When Love Backfires," at the magazine's Web site.