Issues vs. Distractions

In light of Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney and the backfire that resulted, Jonah Goldberg points out a trend in the media's treatment of political controversies:

My complaint isn’t about distractions, it’s about the press’s tendency to treat controversies that help Republicans as “distractions” and ones that hurt Republicans as Very Serious Issues.

As Jonah rightly notes, the backlash to Rosen was absolutely manufactured by Romney and Republicans (and which was joined in by Obama's own David Axlerod and Jim Messina) to point out the baseless "War on Women" attacks by the Democrats, which of course for the media was a real issue.  (Wait I thought during the Republican debates that the real issues were the economy and jobs and it was Republicans distracting us with side issues??)  The problem is that the media feels the need to tell us which of these controversies is real or imagined and that their analysis always seems to disproportionately help out one side over the other.