Tim Graham: Convention 'tone' police – media only sees one party as dark. Guess who

The audiences (and air times) seem to shrink every four years, and most people who tune in are the most committed partisans, not the most independent and persuadable voters. But one long-standing trend in media bias persistently remains: the description of tone.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden's team came out of the Democratic convention insisting the tone was very dark and divisive. Biden blatantly associated President Donald Trump with the darkness and allied himself with "the light," almost implying that Trump is Satan climbing the stairway to heaven.

But NBC's Savannah Guthrie swooned that the "deeply optimistic," "hopeful" and "intimate" Biden address "took on the tone at the end of the fervency of almost a preacher at the pulpit." MSNBC's Joy Reid also heard a preacher's Sunday sermon. CBS contributor Maria Elena Salinas said it was "better than what many of us expected" because he could "show that empathy, show that hope, give people that hope."

When Biden said character, compassion and decency are on the ballot, he strongly suggested Trump lacks all of those. But the journalists gushed this was the best Biden speech ever. No one would discuss the seamier side of the Bidens, because that would ruin the echo.