Barrel Strength

Can John Ibbitson turn in a column about Obama without even proofreading it for logical consistency? Yes, he can:

His opponents’ attempts to smear him as a dangerous socialist with unsavoury connections to terrorists and radicals failed because most Americans didn’t believe a word of it. They had already taken the measure of the man.

[...]

Throughout the campaign, Republicans and other conservatives accused the media of outrageous bias in favour of Mr. Obama, and they were absolutely right. But reporters were only seeing what everyone else was seeing. They drew the same conclusions that the broader population had also drawn. They didn’t lead the electorate to Barack Obama; they were simply swept along with it.

So how precisely did Americans take measure of the man if the media were by his own admission incapable of and/or unwilling to investigate him objectively?