NEW YORK: With little more than five weeks before America goes to the polls, the US media is experiencing the bitter effects of an acutely divided country.

At no time in the past has the media, and especially the news media, drawn such anger for perceptions of bias, and at no time has the media been so sensitive to those accusations.

If the US media industry could once rise above the partisan divide, it has now fallen or been pulled into the thick of the struggle. The degree to which the media is now politicized beyond its control was shown by the recent controversy at CBS News.

Dan Rather, heir to Walter Cronkite and the seemingly unimpeachable voice of reason, took the full force of the storm. The fake documents may have spoken the truth on George Bush's war record, but that point was lost.

In presenting a false report, CBS had seemingly exposed its own bias and was easy to vilify. On both sides of the political divide, the media is now seen as the key battleground. The extent to which both sides perceive that the media is biased against them speaks not to any bias itself, but to how important the media has become to political life.

"If you don't win the media battle, you don't win," says Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff. "What's happened is that the media is the entire game. There is no political life outside of the media. Political consensus is created in the media, political careers are created in the media, and campaigns are won and lost in the media."

Political campaigns grow ever more sophisticated in how to use the media, and the media itself has been overwhelmed by the speed and momentum of the spin it is now subjected to.

While Republicans complain about an innate liberal media bias, and Democrats see an outrageous pro-administration bias at Fox News and elsewhere, others believe that inherent weaknesses, coupled with advances in technology, have rendered the media powerless to cope.

The Columbia Journalism Review recently published an editorial saying it had found that "in the modern media bubble, where technological advances have reporters on what amounts to a constant deadline, processing a never-ending torrent of digital spin, it's often debatable who is actually framing the stories - the journalist or the campaigns".

"The main problem is that the media has been overwhelmed by spin," says executive editor Michael Hoyt. Others believe that market forces have forced the press to adopt more opinionated positions because that's what people want. A recent Pew research poll found that 43 per cent who pay close attention to the news prefer news that suits their point of view.

At a dinner last week, Rupert Murdoch said that had the CBS debacle been Fox's "we would have been crucified". He acknowledged that "the traditional media is against us" and accused it of being "in tune with the elite, not the people".

Brent Cunningham, managing editor of Columbia Journalism Review, does not believe the US is necessarily entering an age of partisan media. Instead, he says, "the mainstream press has been manipulated by both sides - the Bush and Kerry camps - and both have exploited the weakness of this 'he said/she said' journalism".

He says the US press is too beholden to official sources, and has become essentially passive and content to lean on someone else's version of the truth instead of assembling its own, more complete version.

"The press seems like it's partisan, but it's not... it's just weak-kneed," Cunningham adds. "When you have political candidates and operatives who are willing to say whatever is politically expedient because they know it'll get uncritical play before the press rushes on to something else, it starts to read like partisan coverage."

The Swift boat story is a prime example. With no strong and immediate come-back to Republican accusations that John Kerry had not served valiantly in Vietnam, he lost the debate.

But, says Cunningham, "the press did nothing to challenge that infinitely challengeable claim. It is not comfortable injecting issues into the public discourse that are not put out there by some official source, so if the Kerry camp doesn't do a good job defending itself the press doesn't feel any obligation to point out what's inaccurate."

If that's true, the last few weeks of this election will be as fascinating as they are unnerving. Democrats believe that any story not favourable to John Kerry must be the work of Bush's Dr Evil, Karl Rove; Republicans that Bill Clinton and James Carville must be behind any strategic success Kerry achieves.

With a computer and an internet connection anyone can have a media opinion. Bloggers and internet insta-pundits consistently beat the more traditional news media to the spin.

The sense that this election is a charade fought through dissipated mediums is unavoidable. The Republicans, having long felt disadvantaged by a liberal-leaning press, know how to transmit their message below the radar of the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, and are far better at spinning the media.

As many are now predicting, the coming mediated debates between Kerry and Bush may be the deciding factor. But the institutionalized failure of the press to protect itself from becoming helplessly politicized is unlikely to get better until it recovers the will to challenge officialdom.

In small measure there may be a change afoot. The New York Times recently started publishing a facts box that seeks to elevate political debate with... facts. "It's as if the press has been in retreat ever since 9/11," says Cunningham. "It has stiffened up in spots, but it has not been able to set or influence the agenda. And without that ability, all you have is spin." -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.