Mainstream media meltdown mode?

Yes, the mainstream media are dominated by ideological leftists top to bottom. But I've always thought them eager to report fairly, on balance.

Yes, we have many indications that the mainstream press sustains a preference for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.

But the reporting on Sarah Palin is so far over the top as to virtually defy belief. The week's news provides some absolutely stunning examples of reporter ineptitude. I pointed out one where Newsweek reported a judge's order barring Palin from disparaging her sister's ex-husband in front of the couple's children as though the judge's order applied as well to the ex's supervisors.

Power Line and others point to Charlie Gibson's cluelessness in asking Governor Palin about a portion of one of her public prayers that he took out of context.

In the interview with Sarah Palin broadcast on ABC last night, Charles Gibson tried to trip her up in the following exchange:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

As Allahpundit points out, however, what Palin actually said was this:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

To borrow a Lincolnian formulation in honor of the Lincolnian formulation of Palin's prayer: the difference between what Palin actually said and what Gibson quoted her as saying is akin to the difference between a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse.

Power Line notes a flub in the same class from The Washington Post:

As part of its campaign to discredit Governor Sarah Palin, the Washington Post carries a front page article this morning by Anne Kornblut that headlines, falsely: "Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska." The article begins:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

News flash to Ms. Kornblut: the Alaska National Guard isn't going to Iraq to fight "the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein."

This type of shocking ineptitude underscores the problem with the ideologically tilted press: They can't report objectively any longer because they don't have an effective check on their own bias. These examples featuring Palin may only be the tip of the iceberg.

As I have opined in the past, the press routinely recycles its own misconceptions as factual background information for the (ahem) benefit of its readers.