In Orange County, California, in San Diego, CA, in Los Angeles, La Jolla, Del Mar, Pacific Beach, Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Marcos, Mission Beach and Escondido or the cities of Huntington Beach, Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda , Buena Park, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach and Laguna Hills, Buena Park, Temecula, Indian Wells, La Quinta or Palm Springs, unless you have not turned on the television or read a newspaper during the 2008 presidential election, or searched the internet, you’ve seen claims primarily from the Republican campaign that the publishing media is biased.

For the most part in this presidential campaign, one candidate initially regularly directed these attacks at the press, Republican candidate John McCain. While the newspapers expect this to some degree, the public not married to one side of the fence or the other seemed to tire of the attacks. And for California publishing lawyers and election lawyers in CA and the rest of the country, this has been the year when such attacks almost seemed pointless and inconsequential.

In the 2008 presidential election, John McCain denounced the New York Times in the strongest terms, following a Times report that McCain’s campaign manager had received nearly $2 million from mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, said the New York Times is no longer a news organization, but is 150 percent in Barack Obama’s tank. Schmidt previously attacked MSNBC for being an organ of the Democratic National Committee and said the media is on a mission to destroy Sarah Palin.

Unfortunately for John McCain, it has since been reported in the press that McCain’s campaign manager’s lobbying business, owned by his campaign manager, received $15,000 per month for nearly three years and that the campaign manager received $30,000 per month for nearly five years by an advocacy organization he headed that was funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fight regulation. In addition, it was reported that McCain’s senior adviser, his campaign vice president, and his congressional liaison also made large sums of money lobbying Fannie and Freddie or were in companies that did.

In an apparent attempt to deflect attention from his misguided attack on the New York Times story, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to immediately fly to Washington after waking up that morning to find a report in the Washington Post that he was behind in the polls by nine points. Shortly after attempting to criticize that finding, and knowing what the disaster would be with Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric airing that night, McCain decided to ditch her appearance on the David Letterman show, overshadow Couric’s interview with her own interview on CBS News. and announce the suspension of his campaign, which was never really a suspension.

In hindsight, of course, McCain’s actions were a huge misconception. His ramblings around New York after getting rid of Letterman were picked up and beaten mercilessly for two nights on The David Letterman Show and later on The Daily Show, other news shows, on the Internet and in print. When he arrived in Washington the next day, it had already been announced that there was bipartisan support for the bailout bill, which quickly dissipated upon his arrival. It was reported that his campaign had not been suspended and Letterman, among others, joked at her expense why he must have felt that she could not leave her campaign in the hands of Sarah Palin, when she found herself unable to answer simple questions she asked him. Katie Couric. And after announcing that he would not participate in the debate until there was a bailout bill or major progress toward one, he had to fly back from Washington for the debate with no bailout bill in hand and Congress much less united than when he arrived. .

After John McCain was criticized by David Letterman for days, there was little he could do. He couldn’t attack David Letterman for being biased. David Letterman is not news, he is a comedian. He is licensed to make jokes at the candidate’s expense. On top of that, not only did McCain cancel his appearance, but David Letterman showed his audience a live CBS News broadcast of McCain as he put on face makeup for an appearance on CBS News with Katie Couric a short distance away. . When he later made up for his missed appearance on David Letterman two weeks later, he admitted his mistake by saying, “I was wrong.”

Attacking the media has long been a tactic of national candidates. In this election, once again, we have seen this tactic employed, but with little of the success it enjoyed in previous presidential campaigns. The skits of John McCain and Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live have been relentless and hilarious, and with that popularity, there has been little that either candidate has been able to do more than laugh along with the American public and hope for an invite to appear on the show. Program.

There have been surprisingly fewer claims of injustice than might be expected against two news channels that are admittedly ardent supporters of one candidate over another. Even the candidates have made jokes about how some of the MSNBC anchors favor Obama and how many of the Fox News anchors favor McCain. With these jokes, there now appears to be an acceptance of bias by news stations and less effort by news anchors to remain unbiased even in financial channels.

In the past, attacking the press has paid off for presidential candidates. This time, the attack has fallen on deaf ears and has either been the exception to the rule that it will help a candidate, or there is a shift in what a candidate risks if they are wrong or perceived as thin-skinned.

As the election winds down and major newspapers endorse the candidates, with some papers like the Chicago Tribune that have never before endorsed a Democratic Party candidate for president endorsing Obama, accusations of media bias are left to the fore. margin and the electorate will decide whether the press has been fair or not, or just doing their job.