Palin Treated Worse Than Biden

The media are biased. Settled science. 

The 2008 presidential race was one of the most watched, discussed and analyzed campaigns in U.S. history, and when it came to the vice presidential candidates, voters heard a great deal about Sarah Palin.

Much more, in fact, than they heard about her opponent, Joe Biden.

News coverage of Palin, then the Republican governor of Alaska, not only significantly outweighed that received by Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, was markedly different in substance and across media, according to a new study of media coverage of the vice presidential candidates.

Coverage of Palin was more likely to include references to her family, physical appearance and social issues, particularly in newspapers and by political blogs, while coverage of Biden dealt more with foreign policy and the economy.

"Each of these differences could have had important influences on public opinion formation and the public's voting decisions in this particular race," write Leticia Bode, a former graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is now an assistant professor at Georgetown University, and Valerie M. Hennings, an assistant professor at Iowa State University, in the study published in the journal Politics & Policy. She conducted the research while at UW-Madison.

Would the mainstream media have covered it up if Bristol Palin were filmed snorting cocaine?

The New York Post and Radar online reported that lawyers representing the seller, who said he was a "friend", claimed that the footage was alleged to be of Ashley Biden, 27, a social worker, at a party and initially wanted some $2 million for the tape. They described the seller as a "friend" of Miss Biden. 

Mr Biden coined the term "drugs czar" and has been an outspoken supporter of the "war on drugs" waged by the United States. Miss Biden is his youngest child. He has two sons from his first marriage. His first wife and their 18-month-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash in 1972. 

"On the tape a man cuts up five lines of what is said to be cocaine," Radar online reported." The woman who the seller says is Ashley then jokes with the man that the lines aren't big enough. 

"The man hands her a rolled-up dollar bill and she proceeds to walk a few steps to a table where the cocaine is cut. She pulls her hair back, bends down and snorts a line."