Marc Ambinder contemplates the nature of bias in the media, quoting Jim Vandehei and John Harris:

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site–when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring–has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

VandeHarris is right.

Perfect example: Jake Tapper today points to campaign photography as an example of bias in the media; there are more flattering photos of Obama than there are of McCain.

He’s right to call out that atrocious photo of Cindy McCain (why run that?) but if McCain is simply much less photogenic than Obama, as one campaign photographer points out, then isn’t it fair and accurate to have less flattering photos of him in circulation? Going the extra mile to find more flattering photos of a less-photogenic candidate for the sake of balance is bias in itself.

To use an analogy from the sports world: you can’t accuse a sports writer of being biased against Barry Bonds because she writes more negative stories about Bonds than she does about Albert Pujols. Barry Bonds is a criminal and a dickhead, while Albert Pujols is a pretty alright dude. Bonds simply lends himself to more negative coverage.

Now, McCain isn’t quite the jerk Barry Bonds is, and he’s certainly not a criminal, but his candidacy has, by any objective measure, been much more lackluster than Obama’s. Why wouldn’t the coverage reflect that?

The Bridge is New York City’s #1 spot for old school hip hop. Saturdays at 11:00 PM on NYC TV (Channel 25, Cablevision 22)

Whole new season, whole new episodes, whole new vibe: Old School Hip Hop is new again (again) on The Bridge!

Season four officially launched this past Saturday; 8 more episodes showcasing some of your favorite old school videos (from Public Enemy to Wu Tang, Salt N Pepa to Black Moon) alongside contemporary interviews with classic hip hop icons (Rakim, KRS-One, Marley Marl, CL Smooth, Wu-Tang, etc.)

I’ve been involved with The Bridge since it’s inception about three and a half years ago (from Associate Producer, to Producer, to Writer-Director), and each season has been an insane, somewhat surreal blast (meeting Rakim?!?!!?!? Interviewing RZA while an assistant braids his hair?!?!?!? Completely losing my face while attempting to nervously inform Dres from Black Sheep that “Flavor of the Month” is my favorite hip hop video of all time ever?!?!?!?).

This season, however, season four, I’m especially psyched out of my mind about. 2008 represents the 25th anniversary of the legendary Video Music Box, the original, pioneering video show first launched by our host, VJ Ralph McDaniels, on NYC television in May of 1983.

Video Music Box was the first television program (anywhere) to touch on hip hop, and this season, we at The Bridge have done our best to honor that pioneering status, digging into Ralph’s vault to unearth some pretty exclusive stuff: Tribe live at the Marc Ballroom in 91, KRS at the Fever in 87, vintage interviews with Special Ed, Whodini and LL Cool J, the original EPK for Nas’s Illmatic, and more more more.

And while all of the above is some fine promotional talk (and if you live in NYC, watch watch watch!) nothing can really touch on the shock, awe and…I dunno, honor is too strong a word, but seriously; for a white-bred beyond-rural kid, I just can’t fucking believe I actually get to touch this stuff.

It’s all been a magical dream come true, and I’m just waiting to get shot up at the Source awards before I finally wake up and kiss my pillow a thank you.

So here is Notorious, the upcoming, long-awaited, this-thing-better-be-pretty-good Biggie feature film.

You can never dig too much out of a trailer, and this seems more like an initial teaser spot than anything else, so the benefit of the doubt is probably necessary. That said, I’m hoping the movie delves a little deeper than the smooth since days of underoos emphasis this preview takes. Biggie did indeed marry that ish while the rest of us remained merely engaged, but the nature of his death, and the larger implications of the mediated beef that lead to that tragedy, deserves a deeper inquiry.

The one big reason to believe that depth will be missed, however, is that release date. January 16th? No good movies come out in January; January is shit movie season, with rare exception. The Oscar push has ended and half the country is under 18 inches of snow, while every studio is holding off on its crowd-pleasing fare until the late Spring/Early Summer kicks off. January is for table scraps.

And Biggie deserves more than table scraps; he deserves some t-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch’s grape. Which, in the language of movie release dates, translates into a late November/early December opening weekend. Any Biggie picture should obviously appeal more to the street than it does to A.O. Scott, but is it too much to ask to get a high-quality movie out of this dude’s life?

When you’re the greatest to do the greatest thing ever to be done, you deserve your own Oscar-baiting biopic.