From McClatchy, more evidence that the media really are truly blind to their own biases. You cannot make this stuff up. Reporting from a McCain rally in Fairfax:

A half-hour later, the Republicans lined Old Lee Highway to watch the campaign motorcade pull away. As McCain and Palin rolled by, they cheered. As the press van approached a second later, they booed. It was no accident. Ever since McCain chose the largely unknown Palin as his running mate, his campaign has waged an intensive assault on the news media. Capitalizing on errors, rumors and perceived sexism in the frenzied first round of reporting on Palin, the McCain campaign has taken advantage of a changing media landscape, grouping together blogs and supermarket tabloids with mainstream newspapers and television to tar the media as one corrupt monolith, stirring up the conservative base and working to pressure the media from further aggressive reporting on Palin.

Largely unknown? Unknown to whom? She’s a governor — chief executive of Alaska. We’ve all heard of Alaska, right? If a couple of political reporters don’t know anything about the governor of Alaska, isn’t that more a comment on them than on the governor?

But what’s really infuriating about this piece is that “Capitalizing on errors, rumors and perceived sexism in the frenzied first round of reporting on Palin …” bit, as though the McCain campaign is somehow in the wrong for errors committed by the New York Times, which bills itself as the newspaper of record and which made false and arguably defamatory reports about Palin. The Times may not like being lumped in with amateur bloggers and tabloid gossipers and such — in which case it should stop acting like them. And “first round of reporting”? What, the media is supposed to get a do-over because it was the “first round”? When did that rule go into effect?

Setting aside the fact that Gov. Palin is running for vice president, not president — a fact that seems to be frequently overlooked in the press lately — I don’t remember McClatchy newspapers being especially skeptical of the idea that the governor of a less-populous state could make a good chief executive last time around. Remember this guy?

Vermont, population 624,000. There are important differences between Dean and Palin, namely that Palin’s state is at the heart of the energy industry, meaning that she’s dealt intimately with one of the major domestic issues in play for this election. Nobody’s screaming about the high price of Vermont cheddar. (“The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!”)

But the storyline is always the same: No matter how badly the media muffs a story, it’s the fault of critics for pointing out their mistakes.