Today is the one hundred day milestone of President Barack Obama's first term in office. Undoubtedly, the mainstream media will highlight the day with a blitz of favorable publicity about the achievements of the Presidents first three months in office.

In fact, some mainstream journalists could not wait for the actual one hundred day milestone to review the presidents performance over the last three months. For example, Washington Post columnist David Broder has already described the president's first 100 days as "a bravura opening".

Of course, Time magazine once again featured the picture of Barack Obama on its monthly magazine cover. Obama has now made the cover of Time thirteen times in a little over a year.

The magazine article by Time columnist Joe Klein described Mr. Obama's legislative achievements to date as "stupendous". The listing of achievements includes the $789 billion stimulus bill, a budget plan that is still being finalized and progress on universal health insurance.

Meanwhile, the Media Research Center (MRC) has issued a press release of a study of the major networks coverage of the Presidents first one hundred days in office. The Center looked at 852 stories on the Obama administration from January 20 through April 15 on ABC's World News, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News.

The MRC study was highlighted by the following four findings:

1.None of the three broadcast networks aired a single story focused on whether President Obama's economic policies were driving the U.S. towards European-style socialism.

2. Network reporters never called Obama or his agenda even "liberal." NBC and CBS never used the word, and ABC only aired the term twice, citing Republicans using the word "liberal" to describe Obama's policies.

3.The networks never had a single sound bite from a conservative or free market expert on Obama's three major domestic policies: his banking bailout, the auto bailout, and his plans for universal health care.

4. One out of four bank bailout stories (17 of 74) discussed the concept of outright government bank nationalization. In only two was a free market person allowed a rebuttal.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs and Chapman University also released a study of the media coverage of the Presidents first 100 Days. Their study found that the nightly newscasts devoted nearly 28 hours to Obama's presidency in the first 50 days alone. It was six times more coverage than George Bush received and more media coverage than the last two presidents (Bush and Clinton) combined.

So, based on these media studies, two recent columns by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post should really come as no surprise. Kurtz reports of daily media spin conference calls and secret dinners between senior Obama staffers and the Presidents supporters in the Old Media. The dinners have been going on for "more than a year" sponsored by David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic.

In attendance at the functions have been some of the most well known left leaning journalists in Washington with not a single conservative journalist in sight.  Among those in regular attendance were reported to be David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.

The mainstream media in Obama’s first one hundred days in office. Its a story of a lack of journalistic transparency with an agenda that media watchdogs highlight as slanted toward the policies of the President. Its a relationship that is unhealthy and dangerous in a free society.

http://www.eworldvu.com