After Barack Obama’s more-than-enthusiastic greeting by many attendees at the UNITY convention for minority journalists in Chicago on Sunday, some in the media have expressed outrage that some have now questioned their objectivity, despite the appalled reactions from some of their own peers to the display and the live video shown on CNN (at right).

April Yee wrote on Andrew Romano’s blog on Newsweek.com on Monday about the question of whether minority journalists can cover the Illinois senator objectively. She quoted Ernest Suggs of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who objected to this question even coming up in the first place: "That mindset needs to change.... It is offensive that because we have the same color or the same agenda, our journalistic ethics and responsibilities go out the window."

Suggs might have a point, since two of the biggest cheerleaders for Obama in the media are white men: Lee Cowan and Chris Matthews.

In today's Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Mary Mitchell writes of a panel conducted at the UNITY convention of minority journalists:

Earlier, an NPR editor asked panelists whether it was appropriate for journalists to clap for Obama -- and the question uncorked a mounting frustration among many black reporters.

"The total duality of it gets to me," said Les Payne, a member of the panel.

Payne is a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists and an editor at Newsday.

"There's no question that mainstream journalists completely adore McCain and cover him favorably," Payne said.

"Now it is: You cannot do what we do routinely . . . and have been doing for a century," he said.

"You have been writing favorable stories about [President] Bush for eight years. This is a serious problem and one of the reasons why this organization was founded," he said.

That the mainstream media adore McCain comes as a surprise to all of us continually irritated by its fawning and swooning over Barack Obama.