The first night of broadcasting from the Republican National Convention provided an unexpected bounty of outrageous media bias. About a year ago, I filled out all the forms to be put in Cal Poly’s part time teaching pool. One of the classes I thought that I could teach was “Media Ethics.” (How can you teach an oxymoron?) But even as I wrote that down, I wondered if I could come up with enough material to fill a 12-week course.

I need not have worried.

For weeks, the hosts over on MSNBC have been repeating the laughable claim that the GOP doesn’t like Barack Obama solely because he’s black and there’s a coded dog whistle of racism in everything Romney, Ryan and every other Republican says. Even I couldn’t have made this one up.

MARTIN BASHIR: We have seen an early draft of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s forthcoming oration. Can I quote something from you? “For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems, he hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour.” How about that?

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He is trying to align to Tiger Woods and surely, the — lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. They find every way they possibly can to –

BASHIR: Lawrence — don’t you think — don’t you think that what he’s really trying to do is to suggest that the president is not paying attention to the central issues that come with the responsibility he has? Is he really – Mitch McConnell really making a connection with Tiger Woods who, of course, has become infamous for chasing various cocktail waitresses around Las Vegas and so on?

O’DONNELL: Martin, there are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point up want to make. If he wanted to make the point that you just suggested and I think he does want to make that point, they had a menu of a minimum of ten different kinds of images that they could have raised. And I promise you, the speech writers went through, rejecting three or four before they land order that one. That’s the one they want for a very deliberate reason. That — there’s – these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches.

I’m guessing that MSNBC’s insurance premiums are going to go through the roof for psychiatric care.

But it’s not just the talking heads at MSNBC who are peddling this theme. Someone with a much higher tolerance for Bolshevik Storytelling than I watched the left-wing cable channel’s coverage last night and noticed that they failed to show any of the speeches by these individuals:

From left: GOP Congressional candidate Mia Love, former Democrat Rep. Artur Davis, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, Puerto Rico’s First Lady Luce Vela Fortuno and GOP Senate candidate Ted Cruz.

The only speech given by a minority that got air time last night was South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American. With the big wigs constantly telling their viewers that the GOP was a bunch of racist rednecks, showing any of these people receiving hearty applause would have blown their cover.  This is Exhibit A when it comes to bias by omission by a supposedly mainstream news organization.

If you thought MSNBC was just a one-off, here’s a list of opinion articles from The Washington Post web site this morning (via The Corner):

Opinions

Ann Romney’s ham-handed message

Ruth Marcus 2:00 PM ET

Her pandering to women was so obvious, it was off-putting.

Stromberg: Mitt Romney, still inhuman

Sargent: Media need to call out Romney’s lies

Robinson: Chris Christie’s failed advertisement

Achenbach: Notes from a controlled convention

Milbank:  Romney fails to control Ron Paul revolt

Meyerson: South rises again in today’s GOP

But wait, there’s more. Yahoo! News’ Washington Bureau chief was fired today for saying what far too many journalists think.

In video broadcast Monday night by ABC and Yahoo over the Internet, Chalian can be heard claiming that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Ann are unconcerned about the fate of residents of the New Orleans area who are currently being hit by Hurricane Isaac.

“They aren’t concerned at all,” Chalian can be heard on the live broadcast. “They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

And the mainstream media expect Republicans to believe that they are doing their jobs in a “just the facts ma’am” fashion? I guess we should count ourselves lucky that PBS’s Gwen Ifill didn’t get one of the debate moderator jobs this time around.