Wa. Post: “Sure we’re biased.”

Here’s the Washington Post’s Ombudsman Deborah Howell:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

… The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board’s endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

… Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.

I just love that paragraph above, which says, “Sure we’re pro-Obama, but no more so than the rest of our peers!”

But here’s the best part, the part where the Washington Post admits that had they actually done their job of vetting Barack Obama he might never have even beaten Hillary Clinton:

But Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of his undergraduate years, his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago. The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.

Obama’s admitted cocaine use — off limits. But they did run a PAGE 1 story on Cindy McCain’s addiction to prescription painkillers after rupturing two disks and having back surgery.

Oh, well, ho hum. I’m sure the Washington Post can get back to “serious journalism” the next time a serious Republican contender runs for the Oval Office. Maybe they can run another hatchet job on the candidate’s wife too.