By: Adam Nagourney also points out that reporters too often felt the need to carefully balance critical coverage, citing negatives in both campaigns when (sometimes) only one deserved them. "It is a false equivalent," he says. "Just because you say something judgmental about one, you have to say something about the other? That is not true."
So did either candidate get unfair coverage? For those who cited an imbalance, most believed Kerry got the short end of the stick in most cases. "I think Bush got away with murder on the war," says Germond. But Blankley saw the opposite. "I think the print media grossly overreported problems in Iraq and Abu Ghraib," says the former press secretary to Newt Gingrich. "And underreported the successes."
Then there is the flip-flop charge, which Sandalow and others believe was unfairly placed on Kerry. "Branding Kerry a flip-flopper is something newspapers took on its face too much," he says. "They went too long without calling Bush out on his flip-flopping charge. Eventually, they fact-checked."
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