Senator Obama has raised about twice the money John McCain has and that huge paid advertising advantage is helping Obama big time: 35 million people saw his infomercial Wednesday night.
McCain was on "Larry King" -- maybe 3 million people saw that. McCain could have been on "The Factor" and 7 million people would have seen him. Also, millions more would have heard him on "The Radio Factor," but the senator passed and we don't exactly know why.
Now the Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls today have Obama leading McCain by about 5 points. A brand new FOX News poll has the race a bit tighter: Obama leading McCain by 3 among likely voters. But there's no question time is running out for John McCain.
In addition to the money, it's now certain that the American media has given Barack Obama an enormous advantage. According to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, John McCain's getting hosed big time. In all of the media studied, 57 percent of the stories on McCain were negative, 29 percent negative for Obama. Newspapers are very unfair: 69 percent of the reporting on McCain negative, as opposed to 28 percent negative for Obama.
NBC News is the most biased news agency by far -- I don't think anybody's surprised by that. On the broadcast side -- that's primarily Brian Williams and "The Today Show" -- 54 percent of the stories about McCain were negative, 21 percent of Obama stories were negative.
On MSNBC, it's an absolute scandal: 73 percent of the stories on McCain negative, 14 percent negative toward Obama. MSNBC, the Obama network.
Thus a huge American corporation, General Electric, which owns NBC, is using its money and power to benefit a presidential candidate. That is a gross violation of the spirit of the constitutional powers given to a free press.
The three men behind this corruption are GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, NBC News boss Jeff Zucker and NBC News chief Steve Capus. These three calculated that by openly supporting Obama, turning a network into his campaign headquarters, they could lure millions of Obama supporters and make money.
Now, much of the other media covers for NBC, unfortunately. The Associated Press article about the press study had this headline: "NBC News doesn't follow MSNBC's left drift." But that's a bit misleading. The article written by committed leftist David Bauder says that the study found no hint that NBC's coverage was worse than the media as a whole. But, as we mentioned, the media as a whole is far more negative toward McCain than Obama. A nice sleight of hand for the dishonest Bauder, who has written 52 negative stories about the FOX News Channel. I feel like John McCain.
As for FNC, the study found that 40 percent of our reporting was negative to McCain and 40 percent was negative about Obama. Whoa, sounds fair and balanced to me.
Summing up: With a 2-to-1 advantage in money and the American press openly favoring him, Barack Obama is certainly looking forward to Election Day.
And that's the Memo.
Pinheads & Patriots
As you may know, the Navy SEALs are doing much of the behind-the-lines terrorism-fighting around the world. And Wednesday night FOX News boss Roger Ailes was honored by the Navy SEAL Warrior Fund, which provides support for wounded SEALs and their families -- also for the loved ones of SEALs killed in action.
Now, Roger has been a quiet, long-time supporter of this very fine charity and for that, he is a patriot.
On the pinhead front, congratulations to the Phillies for winning the World Series. But boo to some of their fans. Seventy-six pinheads were arrested for running amuck after the game. They caused major damage around the city, and 15 people arrived at various hospitals because of the rowdyism. No excuse for this. Not acceptable.
Most Philly fans are patriots, but obviously, not all.
— You can catch Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" and "Pinheads & Patriots" weeknights at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on the FOX News Channel and any time on foxnews.com/oreilly. Send your comments to: oreilly@foxnews.com
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