Unfair Coverage?

I can't speak for how this is being interpreted at home, but anchors on CNN International are repeating ad nauseum the idea that the news media wants Obama to win and is giving him unfair positive coverage. It's been quite clear to me ever since I got down here that a lot of the hosts on CNN International support McCain, but whatever. I do think the idea that the press is giving unfair coverage to Obama is absurd.

Is he getting more coverage? Yes. But is it because the media supports him? No. It's because the world wants to know more about him. The media is just following the story, the same way they did during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The media and the public are infatuated with personality and Obama has a lot of it. McCain simply doesn't. He's boring, he's old, and he has no message. Obama is young, inspiring, and popular around the world. This supposedly bias is not unrelated to the lack of media inquiry during the road to Iraq. There was no personality-based angle, the American public more or less didn't care, and thus the media was happy to go along. The Obama phenomenon may not make the media look favorable, but it's not for the reason right-wingers think.

On a related note, CNN International has made me realize the value of commercials. They have all the breaks the regular CNN does, but they don't run paid commercials. Instead, they promote their own shows endlessly. And they run the same public service announcements over and over again. If I hear Gwyenth Paltrow, looking VERY SERIOUS, talk about AIDS in Africa again, I'm going to shoot the TV.