The media's abysmal coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign has been the equivalent of a mass press suicide that has signaled the end of journalism.

So wrote National Review contributor and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson Friday in a scathing rebuke of all those so-called impartial journalists who sacrificed their souls and whatever was left of their integrity this year to assist Barack Obama win the White House.

Here are some of Hanson's key points (emphasis added):

There have always been media biases and prejudices. Everyone knew that Walter Cronkite, from his gilded throne at CBS news, helped to alter the course of the Vietnam War, when, in the post-Tet depression, he prematurely declared the war unwinnible. Dan Rather’s career imploded when he knowingly promulgated a forged document that impugned the service record of George W. Bush. We’ve known for a long time — from various polling, and records of political donations of journalists themselves, as well as surveys of public perceptions — that the vast majority of journalists identify themselves as Democratic, and liberal in particular.

Yet we have never quite seen anything like the current media infatuation with Barack Obama, and its collective desire not to raise key issues of concern to the American people.

Hanson then elaborated on four key areas of national interest the press conveniently ignored during this campaign cycle: campaign financing; Joe Biden's history and gaffes; Obama's many nefarious associations, and; Obama's socialist beliefs.

After each ignored area of interest was explained, Hanson posed the following respectively:

Imagine the reaction of the New York Times or the Washington Post had John McCain renounced his promise to participate in public campaign financing, proceeded instead to amass $600 million and outraise the publicly financed Barack Obama four-to-one, and begun airing special 30-minute unanswered infomercials during the last week of the campaign. [...]

Imagine the reaction of Newsweek or Time had moose-hunting mom Sarah Palin claimed FDR went on television to address the nation as President in 1929, or warned America that our enemies abroad would test John McCain and that his response would result in a radical loss of his popularity at home. [...]

Imagine the reaction of CNN or NBC had John McCain’s pastor and spiritual advisor of 20 years been revealed as a white supremacist who damned a multiracial United States, or had he been a close acquaintance until 2005 of an unrepentant terrorist bomber of abortion clinics, or had McCain himself sued to eliminate congressional opponents by challenging the validity of African-American voters who signed petitions, or had both his primary and general election senatorial rivals imploded once their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked. [...]

Imagine the reaction of NPR and PBS had John McCain advocated something like abolishing all capital gains taxes, or repealing incomes taxes in favor of a national retail sales tax. [...]

Imagine indeed.

Frankly, had the media done their job this year rather than act as Obama's campaign stooges, McCain would likely have a ten-point lead in the polls right now, or at the very least be facing off against Hillary Clinton next Tuesday, as the junior senator from Illinois wouldn't have gotten out of the primaries.

Hanson concluded:

The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.

Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.

Only if President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid don't reenact the Fairness Doctrine, and eliminate all opposing views.

Alas, the recent decision by the Obama campaign to remove representatives of three newspapers from its plane doesn't give one confidence the truth about the junior senator from Illinois will ever be revealed to the masses.

Regardless, read the whole thing.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.