Do Ohio voters truly believe the Cleveland Plain Dealer delivers the news impartially? The Plain Dealer’s coverage of the third and final presidential debate was cunningly supported by quotes that were only from left-wing news outlets.

First, the Plain Dealer said Obama had won a clear victory, quoting the Washington Post. The Post’s brief summation was a masterpiece of subterfuge:

Snap polls from multiple outlets gave President Obama the victory over Mitt Romney in the foreign policy debate. In a CNN-ORC poll, 48 percent of voters said Obama won; 40 percent said Romney did. A CBS poll of uncommitted voters was more dramatic: Obama took 53 percent, Romney took 23 percent, and another 24 percent called it a tie. A survey done by the Democratic automated firm Public Policy Polling, taken in 11 swing states, found Obama won 53 percent to 42 percent. Among independents, he won 55 percent to 40 percent. 

Let’s parse this for a moment; the Plain Dealer quoted two polls, one from CNN and one from CBS. Fair enough. Then they quoted the poll done from Public Policy Polling (PPP) to aver that Obama won with independents. But in the same poll, PPP stated that 47% of independents said they were more likely to vote for Romney and only 32% said they were more likely to vote for Obama.

The Plain Dealer wasn’t finished with their chicanery yet. Just who were the luminaries they quoted in the rest of their coverage?

1.     Glenn Thrush of Politico

2.     The Los Angeles Times editorial board

3.     David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun (who once slammed Fox News as “rotten to the core” while saying of Politico “I watched Politico on C-SPAN, and thought I had died and gone to a heaven where television provided smart, savvy, real, semi-raw election night coverage again.”)

4.     Tom Cohen of CNN

5.     CNN Chief National Correspondent John King

6.     CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen

7.     E.J Dionne of the Washington Post

8.     Clive Crook of the Atlantic

In an effort to obscure their incredible bias, the Plain Dealer quoted Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor, saying Obama "won tonight on points, no doubt about it." Castellanos is so representative of the conservative wing that he teamed with Democratic Party strategist Steve McMahon in 2008 to form Purple Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs firm.

Did the Plain Dealer quote Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist who is widely acknowledged as one of the best and most analytical pundits, if not the best and most analytical pundit?  Why not?

Krauthammer thought Romney won the debate. Oh.

This is the same newspaper that endorsed Sherrod Brown, uber-liberal, the same newspaper whose PolitifactOhio site has a strong bias toward the Democratic Party, as noted here.

When the Cleveland Plain Dealer covers the news, be forewarned: something very fishy is going on.