And it's not just Obama. Last year, Harvard and PEJ studied presidential campaign stories from January through May in print, TV, radio and Internet outlets. Surprise, surprise, it turns out Democrats got more stories (49 percent) than Republicans (31 percent). Also, the tone of the coverage was more positive for Democrats (35 percent) than for Republicans (26 percent).

"Not only did the Republicans receive less coverage overall," the Harvard study authors say, "the attention they did get tended to be more negative than that of Democrats. And in some specific media genres, the difference is particularly striking." For example, 59 percent of front-page stories about Democrats in 11 newspapers had a "clear, positive message vs. 11 percent that carried a negative tone."

Obama's coverage was 70 percent positive and 9 percent negative. Hillary Clinton's was 61 percent positive and 13 percent negative. Yet only 26 percent of the stories on Republican candidates were positive, and 40 percent were negative.

On TV, evening network newscasts gave Democrats 49 percent of their campaign coverage and Republicans 28 percent. As for tone, 39.5 percent of the Democratic coverage was positive and 17.1 percent negative, while 18.6 percent of the Republican coverage was positive versus 37.2 percent negative.

This brings us to one of McCain's follies: McCain-Feingold. The act prohibits so-called soft money donations to national party committees, places restrictions on political ads that specifically name federal candidates 60 days prior to general elections, and prohibits any ads paid for by corporations or nonprofit "issue organizations," such as Right to Life.

Opponents of McCain-Feingold know something that apparently John McCain did not. The Democratic message -- hostility toward "the rich," the supposed "right" to health care, the general disdain toward the Bush administration -- gets an airing in our mainstream media … for free.

There's a line between journalism and advocacy. "Journalists" crossed it a long time ago.