Tedd Tripp on Parenting

Audio and video sessions from the recent parenting conference at Mars Hill in Seattle, featuring Tedd Tripp.

Session 1: The Call to Formative Instruction

• Audio
• Video

Session 2: Giving Kids a Vision for God’s Glory

• Audio
• Video

Session 3: Helping Kids Understand Authority

• Audio
• Video

Session 4: Helping Kids Understand the Heart

• Audio
• Video

Session 5: Overview of Corrective Discipline

• Audio
• Video

The billion dollar band

U2 will still be rocking and coining it when they approach their 60s, after the fine print of their lucrative new deal was revealed this week

Independent, October 25, 2008

Recession may be the buzzword of the year, but not in U2's world. The band's ability to command top dollar seems to be as strong as it always was.

And this week, while students and pensioners took to the streets to protest over a divisive Budget, details of U2's most recent deal were coming to light.

It was revealed that Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr had received shares totalling (EU)19m as part of their deal with U.S. entertainment giant Live Nation, which was signed amid much industry gossip in March.

The up-front payment -- made public after being reported to U.S. regulator Security and Exchange Commission -- is effectively a sweetener for signing up to Live Nation's new model order, and a telling illustration of how crucial the Dublin four-piece is for the U.S. corporation.

It also showcases the unstinting appeal of the U2 brand. After all, the 12-year deal signed with Live Nation is dependent on them being a going concern right up to their late 50s and being able to stay relevant in shifting music climates.

U2, all in their mid-40s now, are expected to play three hugely lucrative tours during the duration of the dozen-year deal. Based on their live outings to date, the band should comfortably pull in over $1bn from touring alone, as well as hundreds of million dollars more on merchandising. Both the band and Live Nation will share a sizeable chunk of all the money earned.

Unlike Madonna and Jay-Z -- who both signed big-money deals with Live Nation this summer -- U2 will retain control over their studio recordings. They enjoy an existing deal with Universal -- the biggest of the four record company "majors" -- and their forthcoming 12th album, tentatively titled No Line on the Horizon, will yield the band a rumoured 28pc royalty for each copy sold.

It's a royalty rate that's one of the best in the business and one that the band has enjoyed since the mid-Eighties. When one considers that each studio album shifts in the region of 10 million copies -- maintaining their position of, in Bono's words, "the biggest band in the world" -- those 28pcs really add up.

U2's decision to move part of its financial empire to Holland to minimise the tax they pay on the publishing side of their business continues to be criticised. In 2006, the group began moving some of their business affairs to a Dutch finance house in order to avail of a virtually tax-free status on their handsome royalties.

They are believed to have saved around (EU)15m by transferring the music publishing side of their business empire to Amsterdam -- a relatively paltry sum given their estimated joint wealth of (EU)690m.

"The reality is that U2's business is 90pc conducted around the world," manager Paul McGuinness said at the time. "Ninety percent of our tickets and 98pc of our records are sold outside of Ireland. It [Ireland] is where we live and where we work and where we employ a lot of people. But we pay taxes all over the world. And like any other business, we're perfectly entitled to minimise the tax we pay."

McGuinness -- the band's manager of over 30 years -- is seen as the the primary architect of U2's enormous wealth. Famously, the band divides all earnings in five equal portions, with McGuinness bagging as much as Bono.

Although he holds no business qualifications, McGuinness has been instrumental in managing their finances from day one.

His first role in rock management was looking after the long-forgotten trad-rock band Spud, but when he happened upon U2 he found something he liked in the then rough-and-ready band.

When he first started managing the group, they were still at school and legend has it that he kept the coins for their bus fares in a glass jar, only doling out the amount they required.

While debut album Boy helped put the band on the map, it was McGuinness who pushed them to tour the U.S. -- an often crippling expense for fledgling Irish bands, but one which helped foster a mutual love affair between the group and America.

And it was McGuinness who helped restore confidence in a band racked with insecurity after second album October was generally badly received. They re-grouped and hit the big time with its anthemic follow-up, War.

While the temptation must have existed early on to cash in there and then and sell the rights of the band's songs to the record company, he held firm. Others, such as Paul McCartney, sold the rights to their entire catalogue only to rue the decision shortly afterwards.

It was this intransigence and unshakable belief in U2's worth that helped McGuinness to negotiate their high royalty rate with Island Records -- one of the most lucrative in music history.

McGuinness also conducted the groundbreaking deal with Apple four years ago, which resulted in the U2 iPod, emblazoned with the key colours of their last album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, as well as helping to make Apple's iTunes the big success it is today by making 400 of their songs available -- a resounding endorsement to the legal download site.

When U2 signed with Live Nation, McGuinness explained the band's rationale: "There's a certain convergence taking place in the industry, and it's obvious that the biggest part of U2's business now is their live business, even though they're a major, major record-selling act."

The band's relationship with Live Nation has been mutually beneficial. McGuinness says: "For some time now, they've been executing, promoting and producing our tours as partners pretty well perfectly. Since they want to consolidate rights and they have an online vision that I believe in, their Ticketmaster deal is expiring, which is going to change their margin, I'm very happy to go into a partnership with them.

And, apart from all the financial stuff, there is a real friendship, a real bond."

That bond is wholly understandable when one considers that U2's 18-month Vertigo tour between 2005 and 2007 took in close to (EU)400m, making it the second-highest grossing tour of all time (behind the Rolling Stones).

The length of the deal, which exceeds even Madonna's 10-year pact, "indeed is a mark of the faith and trust we have in them," according to McGuinness. "In 12 years' time, U2 will not even be the age the Rolling Stones are now."

Unlike Mick Jagger and friends, U2 will be hoping to continue to generate excitement about each new album released rather than rest on a greatest hits routine.

Few bands of their vintage continue to arouse such fascination on the music front and there is building anticipation for No Line on the Horizon, which will be released earlier next year rather than in November as had been originally thought.

After flirting with dance music and electronica in the Nineties, U2 this decade have returned, to some extent, to their roots with a harder, rock-oriented sound. Various members of the "U2 family" have been making encouraging noises of late -- including long-term producer Daniel Lanois, who recently described it as "one of the great, innovative records from U2."

Universal -- and Interscope, its subsidiary that U2 now call home -- will be hoping that it can follow the successes of the two other albums that the band have released this decade, 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

Meanwhile, Bono was in the news this week for reasons closer to home. He and his wife Ali have applied to Dun Laoghaire/ Rathdown Co. Council to add an extension to their Killiney mansion to provide them with a massive master bedroom, two ensuite bathrooms, walk-in dressing rooms and a study.

Although none of the members lives the sort of ostentatious lifestyle enjoyed by Elton John, for instance, they are not exactly scrimping it either.

With homes in Killiney (valued at about (EU)10m) and a villa in the south of France, Bono also spends time in his enormous triplex penthouse apartment in Manhattan.

The Edge divides his time between Dalkey, Co. Dublin, a waterside mansion in Malibu, California, and a French villa.

Adam Clayton owns a 20-room pile in Rathfarnham, south Dublin, while Larry Mullen Jr. has a pair of large houses in Howth on Dublin's northside.

Top 10 Spiritual U2 Songs

Related Article(s):

• September 08 2008 - @U2 - U2 Lists: Top 8 Alternative Songs
• July 21 2008 - @U2 - U2 Lists: The 5 Best Things About Being a U2 Fan
• July 01 2008 - @U2 - U2 Lists: Top Ten One-Line Lyrics

Born Alive Bill & Obama

Obama's Prime-Time Ad Fact Check

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama
was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night
about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures
he would face in office.

Obama's assertion that "I've offered spending cuts above and
beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his
partisans. His vow to save money by "eliminating programs that
don't work" masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify
what those programs are - beyond the withdrawal of troops from
Iraq.

A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn't
tell them:

THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving
information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and
pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the
typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any
set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five
years on electronic medical records and by improving access to
proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers
will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest
cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to
the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are
skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's
not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers
in the form of lower premiums.
---

THE SPIN: "I also believe every American has a right to
affordable health care."

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee
of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted
as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured:
"I want to start doing something about it." He would mandate
coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at
making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of
government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for
federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger
employers to share costs of insuring workers.
---

THE SPIN: "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their
cost."

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican
John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for
a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama's policy proposals
would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years - and
that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been
quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: "Both John McCain
and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially
increase the national debt over the next 10 years." The analysis
goes on to say: "Neither candidate's plan would significantly
increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax
increases that the campaigns have not specified."
---

THE SPIN: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working
family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax
credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S.
over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that
ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith
effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90
days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to
help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open.
"

THE FACTS: His proposals - the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the
$15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more -
cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion
deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged - although
not in his commercial - that: "The next president will have to
scale back his agenda and some of his proposals."

A Healthy Obsession: Yes, you could be addicted to cycling--and that's probably a good thing.

Bicycling--and other forms of vigorous exercise--changes brain chemistry, says John J. Ratey, M.D., author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain and an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Exercise increases the amount in your body of neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, chemicals that allow neurons to communicate with one another. "They get a boost very quickly," Ratey says.

Scientists have long suspected that dopamine in particular plays a key role in fueling human drive. The theory is that the brain releases dopamine to spur behavior associated with survival, such as eating, having sex and winning money. Dopamine makes those experiences more salient and memorable--and more appealing, which motivates us to repeat them. So while our brains recognize that biking is fun, dopamine reinforces the point.

Notably, alcohol and nicotine trigger the release of dopamine into the same area of the brain that exercise does. "This particular pathway has been linked to reward and motivation, and it contributes to how we pursue healthy and unhealthy behavior," says Daniel McGehee, Ph.D., a neurobiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center who studies the link between nicotine and dopamine.

It's possible to become hooked on the chemical changes that exercise brings about, Ratey says. Hard rides trigger human growth hormone, which he calls the body's "master craftsman," because it burns belly fat, adds muscle fiber and increases brain volume.

Let Christians Vote As Though They Were Not Voting

John McCain — The Agony of a Gadfly

NY Times presidential endorsements

Ho hum, last week the New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for president. Accompanying the endorsement, however, was an online feature of interest to anyone fascinated by the history of presidents or newspapers: "New York Times Endorsement Through the Ages," a compilation of every Times general-election presidential endorsement starting in 1860.

Although the paper's first six endorsements all went to Republicans, between 1884 and 1936 it gave the nod to every Democratic nominee except the populist William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was nominated three times, occasioning two Republican endorsements, for McKinley in 1900 and Taft in 1908. In 1896 the Times endorsed John Palmer, a Democrat who favored the gold standard and ran under the banner of the National Democratic Party. Palmer got just under 1% nationwide and a whopping 1.33% in New York state, which is why you've probably never heard of him.

The Times endorsed Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940, in part out of discomfort at the thought of giving Franklin D. Roosevelt an unprecedented third term. The Times also faulted FDR for "fostering the idea that there exists a great fund of wealth which has only to be divided more equitably in order to make everyone prosperous" and "permitting important members of his Administration to preach the doctrines of class jealousy and class hatred." Ah, the good old days.

The paper switched back to FDR in the wartime election of 1944, supporting him over Republican Thomas Dewey. It endorsed Dewey over Truman in 1948, then Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. In 1960, John F. Kennedy got the nod--and so did every subsequent Democrat, 13 in a row and counting.

A political endorsement is, to some extent, an act of prognostication, and as we read through the old editorials we were amused at some of the predictions that turned out to be quite wrong:

In endorsing Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Times noted that the Senate was certain to remain under Democratic control, and thus predicted that his tenure would not be all that consequential:

There will be no hostile legislation at Washington--no "overt acts" of aggression which will call for a declaration of independence on the part of the Southern States. Things will go on very much as they have hitherto--except that we shall have honesty and manliness instead of meanness and corruption in the Executive departments, and a decent regard for the opinions of mankind in the tone and talk of the Government on the subject of Slavery.

Other than the Civil War, the prediction was accurate.

In 1872, the Times opined that "[Horace] Greeley's election would mean, so far as New-York State is concerned, the revival of Tammany, and the utter loss of all the positions we won last year.--Grant's re-election would bury Tammany and all its supporters fifty fathoms deep." Grant won, but Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine, remained formidable until FDR's election in 1932.

Of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, the Times predicted: "He will be carried to the White House by the force of popular confidence, made all the stronger by his non-participation in the struggle for party victory." In fact, his opponent, Democrat Samuel Tilden, received a majority of the popular vote, and Hayes became president only after a prolonged controversy over four states' electoral votes.

In 1912, the Republicans split. President Taft, the party's nominee, was challenged by former president Theodore Roosevelt as well as Democrat Woodrow Wilson. The Times issued an odd dual endorsement titled "Wilson First, Taft Second":

It is in the interest of the Nation that the Republican Party should be preserved as an organized, coherent opposition. It is of great moment, it is of urgent need, that the Republican candidate should come out second in the poll, second, not third, in the Electoral College and in the popular vote. The party will then be in a position to rebuild, to free itself from the influences that have diminished its estate, to hold again the place in the politics and in the affairs of the Nation to which it is entitled by its historic achievements.

Roosevelt surpassed Taft in both the popular vote (27% to 23%) and the electoral (88 to 8). But the schism did not last. By 1916 the party was unified behind Charles Evans Hughes, and in 1920 it again won the White House, going on to dominate politics until the stock market crash of 1929.

In 1928 the Times endorsed Alfred E. Smith on the strength of a single issue: Prohibition, which Smith opposed:

It is the first opportunity which Americans opposed to prohibition have ever had to register their opinion and make it felt by the politicians. If this opportunity is not grasped, years may pass before it comes again. All the Dry forces are militantly for Hoover. . . . If [Smith] is defeated every fortress will be in the hands of the Drys. Congress will more than ever accept the voice of the Anti-Saloon League as the voice of the American people. . . . If Hoover is elected, every anti-prohibitionist who voted for him should acquiesce in present conditions without further complaint.

Hoover was elected, but political tides turned. Less than two weeks before Hoover left office, Congress, then in Democratic hands, proposed the 21st Amendment, which was ratified by the end of 1933.

In endorsing FDR's 1936 re-election, the Times found reassurance in the calming of political rhetoric:

No responsible Republican any longer froths at the mouth in charging that President Roosevelt is setting out to be a dictator after the style of Stalin or Hitler. The wild assertions that he intends to tear up the Constitution and destroy the Supreme Court are not heard today from any serious speaker.

In 1937, however, Roosevelt proposed legislation that would have expanded the Supreme Court, allowing FDR to nominate six new members immediately. Congress balked at his "court packing" plan. As for the suggestion that FDR was setting out to be a dictator, it did arise again in 1940, when he sought a third term:

The doctrine of one man's indispensability is a new doctrine for the United States. It is a doctrine which less scrupulous men in Europe have used to root themselves in power.

That quotation is from the Times's endorsement of Wendell Willkie.

Endorsing Kennedy over Nixon in 1960, the Times praised his restraint on the then-burning question of Quemoy and Matsu, a pair of Chinese islands under Taiwanese control that the Red Chinese had attempted to conquer:

There are large areas of the world--particularly in Southeastern Asia--where ideological conflict between communism and anti-communism may break out at any moment into local warfare. Are we, as Mr. Nixon suggests, to use American manpower to prevent the loss of "one inch of free territory" in such areas? The choice is not so easy as Mr. Nixon implies. It involves the question of the intrinsic importance of each such area to the security of the United States, the question of allied assistance, the possible cost of American intervention in terms of American lives. The oversimplification of Mr. Nixon's sweeping declarations in these matters is not reassuring.

As it turned out, it was Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who got America into a shooting war in Southeast Asia.

In 1984 the Times thought Walter Mondale would be a better Cold War president than the incumbent:

Lawyer Mondale offers pragmatic skill at making the best of reality. Ideologue Reagan offers the same tenacity that has brought him out diplomatically empty-handed. Who is likely to do better in arms negotiations in the next term, Walter Mondale or the President who tickles the religious right by reviling the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire?

This was not quite disproved, since Mondale never got the chance, but it's hard to imagine he could have turned out better on this score than Reagan did.

Since we've had some fun at the expense of the Times's errors, we thought we'd compile all of The Wall Street Journal's presidential endorsements and take a look at them as well. Fortunately, our job was easier than the Times guys', for here is the complete list:

• 1928: Herbert Hoover (defeated Alfred E. Smith)

The Hoover endorsement was less than full-throated, and, like many of the Times's endorsements, it cannot be reckoned a prognosticatorial triumph:

The Wall Street Journal has criticized the tariff more than it has ever praised it and regards the device of the Tariff Board as bad in principle and worse in practice. It was opposed to the Eighteenth Amendment. It regards the plea that labor is more efficient under Prohibition as a thoroughly immoral argument for chattel slavery. Nevertheless it advises its readers to vote for Hoover, as the soundest business proposition for those with a financial stake in the country.

Like Mondale and arms control, Smith never got a chance to be tested as a "business proposition." But of course things got bad enough under Hoover that it is difficult to imagine they would have been worse.

Palin Shows How to Transcend the Culture Wars: A society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members.

AP

Todd and Sarah Palin with their son Trig.

Will Obama Gut Defense? Capitol Hill Democrats want to target the Pentagon.

Current levels of funding don't quite suffice to operate 300 ships, or about half the number the U.S. had at the end of the Reagan arms buildup. The Navy would be satisfied with 313.

Current funding is also just adequate to purchase about 65 new planes for the Air Force each year, even as the average age of each plane creeps upward to nearly 24 years. Last year, the entire fleet of F-15Cs -- the Air Force's mainstay fighter -- was grounded after one of the planes came apart in midair. Spending on maintenance alone is up more than 80% from a decade ago. Is that another defense item Mr. Biden thinks we can't afford?

(As for nuclear weapons, the U.S. hasn't built a new warhead in decades. Its mainstay, the W76, is widely suspected of being unreliable, yet Congress has resisted funding the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead.)

Maybe it seems odd that the Pentagon, whose budget for 2009 runs to well over $500 billion -- not including the supplemental $165 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan -- should struggle to afford the equipment it needs.

But it's not odd. We've been fighting two wars, straining people and equipment. Weapons have generally become more complex and expensive. President Clinton's "procurement holiday" punted the modernization problems to the present. And even after the Bush buildup, defense spending amounts to just 4% of gross domestic product. By contrast, at the nadir of Cold War defense spending under Jimmy Carter, the figure was 4.7%.

All this should argue for at least a modest recapitalization effort by an Obama administration, assuming it really believes a strong military is "necessary to sustain peace." A study by the Heritage Foundation makes the case that defense spending should rise to close to $800 billion over the next four years in order to stick to the 4% GDP benchmark. That's unrealistic in light of the financial crisis. But holding the line at current levels is doable -- and necessary.

Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution: The courts are poised for a takeover by the judicial left.

Chad Crowe

ABC News.com: Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will apprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.

Reporting Bias

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense & indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.

The Presidential Campaign

But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Joe the Plumber

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes & and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Bad Editors

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power & only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country &

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.

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