Power to the People — Daily Telegraph, 30th March, 2015

Baird's triumph — Daily Telegraph, 30th March, 2015

Positive premier puts NSW in front — Daily Telegraph, 30th March, 2015

Hello, I'm Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.

And that was today's Daily Telegraph celebrating a popular victory for the Coalition in this weekend's NSW state election.

And it's no surprise if the Tele is crowing, because the paper did its damndest to get Mike Baird re-elected by bashing his Labor rivals and leader Luke Foley with headlines like this:

LABOR'S BIG LIE — Daily Telegraph, 20th March, 2015

IN THEIR POCKET — Daily Telegraph, 12th March, 2015

Foley's just off the rails — Daily Telegraph, 17th March, 2015

Bus blue puts Luke in mountain of trouble — Daily Telegraph, 26th March, 2015

The Labor leader was also targeted several times by the Tele's cartoonist, Warren Brown, who shows Luke Foley in this one with hemp, Das Kapital, a koala suit and power stations of the Soviet Union in his Easter showbag :

The Tele's editorials also had one key target .. to get the Liberals in and keep Labor out.

And that is their right, as long as the paper gives readers the facts and keeps its news stories and headlines fair, balanced and opinion free.

But in true Tele fashion those were fiercely partisan, like this one lampooning the Labor leader as a green koala :

LUKE FOLIAGE LOONEY ALLIANCE ALP's cynical preference deal with the Greens — Daily Telegraph, 18th March, 2015

That classic was the Tele's front page the day after it emerged Labor would preference the Greens in the upper house

But next day the paper managed to bash the ALP leader again-this time as a hypocrite-on the basis that one Labor MP was refusing to do a deal with the Greens in his seat .

PHONEY FOLEY EXCLUSIVE Opposition Leader's two-faced messages on the environment — Daily Telegraph, 19th March, 2015

But, among several examples of gratuitous bias, this story last week probably deserves first prize.

BALLS - UP MAKES FOLEY A FALL GUY ... Opposition Leader Luke Foley challenged children at the St Ambrose Catholic Primary School in Pottsville to a friendly game of soccer. But in an embarrassing gaffe that just may be a portent of what awaits Labor at the ballot box, Mr Foley slipped and crashed to the ground. — Daily Telegraph, 25th March, 2015

Memo to politicians. Never fall over in front of a camera, especially if the Tele's watching.

And memo number two ... while we're about it ... stand next to the editor of the paper if you can, as Mike Baird is doing here with Paul Whittaker at the Tele's awards for Champions of the West.

Even better than that of course, get yourself in the Tele's ad campaign, as a smiling Mike Baird did last October when he sat on the train with Andrew Bolt.

Now you can't expect politicians to pass up such chances.

But it's the media's job to keep our leaders at arm's length.

And it's also their job to give the news straight.

Indeed, News Corp's own code of conduct makes that clear, by saying, firstly:

Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced. — Daily Telegraph, Code of conduct

And secondly:

Clear distinction must be made between fact, conjecture, comment and opinion. — Daily Telegraph, Code of conduct

The Australian Press Council has pretty much the same set of rules.

So why does the Telegraph so often ignore them?

Well, it says it does not :

The Daily Telegraph rejects the assertion that its state election coverage was unfair or unbalanced. — Daily Telegraph, Statement to Media Watch, 30th March, 2015

But we think the figures prove them wrong.

On our count, the Tele ran a total of 86 political news stories during the campaign.

And 51 of these were anti Labor or pro the Coaltion.

We judged a further 32 to be neutral.

While just three were critical of the Coalition or supportive of Labor.

And we should say the Sydney Morning Herald also backed Baird. But it did so in editorials and comment pieces.

Its news stories and headlines were less strident and numerically more balanced. But the figures suggest, if anything it was biased towards Labor.