Now the confessions come in from multiple sources: the media has been in the tank for Barack Obama. (Chris Matthews lets on that it may not be “official” MSNBC policy to back Obama, but we should know they have their hearts in the “right” place.) Oh, and they hate Hillary Clinton too. Salon‘s reporter tells us:

They were swooning. I was at a speech, I remember it, I will write about it some day, in Manchester, and every, the biggest names in our business were there, and they were, they could repeat some of his speech lines to one another. It was like a Bruce Springsteen concert where the fans sing along. And, you know, I respected it to some extent. He’s a towering political figure. Of our generation, he’s probably the best politician, he’s inspiring. And, reporters, white reporters, black reporters, reporters of every race, we want to get beyond racism in America. So, he was, he was inspiring, I understood it, they’re humans, they responded. The downside though is that they hate, hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word.

I know it’s shocking to learn there is bias in the media. But what is surprising is that any felt obligation to go along with the pretense–the canard that they have not been in Obama’s corner–is gone. Now, it would be unfair to say every member of the mainstream media and every outlet has been equally at fault here. ABC certainly did its part to re-establish journalistic integrity by running a tough, informative, and ultimately impactful debate. And in the Bizarro World of politics we now inhabit, Hillary Clinton will attest to her fair treatment by Fox.

Still, one wonders how much longer both the media mavens and the public at large will take this kind of “analysis” seriously. It’s one thing to get almost everything wrong (e.g. McCain was dead, Hillary was inevitable in 2007, Obama was golden in February 2008). It’s quite another for people “in the club” to admit openly that they weren’t much interested in being objective.

Why the confessions? Aside from guilty consciences, it may be an effort to get back in the good graces of the candidate most affected by their favorite-playing (and one who might just survive to enact revenge): Hillary Clinton. Good luck with that!