What lies beneath

Election 2008: Hyped media coverage of Obama may be covering up other issues | Jamie Dean

Candice C. Cusic/Chicago Tribune/MCT/Newscom

The deeper problem to lopsided, hyped media coverage of frontrunner Barack Obama in the final days of the presidential race is what else it may be covering up:

Contentious connections

Media outlets blamed Palin for stoking anti-Obama sentiment with her comments suggesting Obama was "palling around with terrorists," and that he "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist." The living room belonged to William Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a radical, anti-government group blamed for setting bombs in the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, told The New York Times in a story published Sept. 11, 2001: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."