Why is the media giving Bush a pass?

The media is doing an atrocious job of covering the education ad scandal. If you didn't hear about it, understandably since none of the tv stations are covering it, the Bush campaign sent out what appears to be a news story touting his education plan to the small local news stations to air. The problem is, it's not a news story, the "reporter" was paid by the Bush campaign and the story was financed by the Bush campaign. It essentially amounts to a campaign ad, disguised as a news story.

This is the second time Bush was caught doing this. The first time, the "news story" touted his Drug Plan and the reporter was an actor using a fake name. But I doubt many of you even know about it. The only people that wrote even a small story on it were Yahoo News, Newsweek, and the Daily Show even though Congress reprimanded Bush for it. This time, there is even less coverage.

You probably also didn't hear about the time when Bush threatened to fire one of the administration officials for wanting to release to congress before they voted that the true cost of the drug plan would be 200 billion higher than Bush told them it would be. That didn't get much coverage either. All these blatant intentional attempts to mislead the American public on such serious things by Bush get completley ignored. Yet if Kerry so much as opens his mouth, the news media is all over it with Fox News leading the pack. Yes, this is probably because the republicans have a very well organized attack machine. But the media atleast has the responsibility to cover the real news when it actually happens.

Whats even worse was the coverage of the debate...

I don't see how a single sane person could conclude that Bush won the debate or that it was even a tie. He spoke out in favor of a bill that said a women shouldn't be able to have an abortion even if her life was in danger. He spoke out in favor of a bill that said a child raped by her father had to notify her father before getting an abortion. Through out the debate, where Kerry responded with facts and reason, Bush mostly rebutted with campaign slogans. Just how many times did he reply to something Kerry said with (we'll stay the course, we got to). He yet again refused to point out a single mistake he made when asked to. It's not like he didn't make any. He did ignore the advice of all those generals that warned him that he needed more troops. He did fail to make sure all the troops had the equipment and body armor they needed before starting the war and didn't do anything about it for a full year and a half. In fact, the lack of body armor is still a huge problem over there! Even my six year cousin has the maturity to admit when he made a mistake. The amount of simplistic thought he portrayed when he said that things are simple frankly scared me.

His behavior was erratic as well. He practically charged the moderator. He was practically screaming he was so angry. I had to turn down the volume because it woke up my roommate. During each of the side shots, he was blinking like thirty times over a ten second period. Was he sending morse code out to his base or telling Rove it's an SOS or something? I don't really think the blinking and really loud voice is that big a deal and didn't think the smirking and slouching the first debate was that big a deal. But the way he was disrespectful to the moderator in my eyes IS a problem. The moderator decides if you can spend more time on the topic or not. Not Bush. I remember during the first debate Kerry wanted an extension to reply but the moderator said he couldn't and they had too many topics to cover. So Kerry respected the decision. Bush wouldn't even give the guy a second to get a word in edge wise. Is that the kind of man you want representing the US to other leaders. Is that how he would treat other people that he disagreed with? If Kerry did that, you know the media would have been all over him like they were with the Dean scream. Yet not a single network so much as brought it up after the debate. All of them said that Bush did better or did as well. I'm not sure why. Maybe they felt bad about all the complaints they got from republicans about how much emphasis they placed on Bush's posture and facial expressions the first debate. But in doing so, they influenced people's opinions of how Bush did. Or maybe the expectations of Bush really were that low? Is that how little we ask of our commander and chief?