Move over, Jack Abramoff. Here comes the Washington press corps.

A Rasmussen Reports poll found this week that 55% of voters nationwide believe that media bias is a more serious problem than big campaign contributions. To quote the Rasmussen story on the findings, “People believe media bias is a bigger problem even though 63% believe most politicians will break the rules to help campaign contributors.”

In short, Americans worry more about how the media spins a story than about whether some well-heeled K Street lobbyist for, say, the petroleum industry lays a big donation on the candidate of his or her choice. Sounds like we’re pretty confident we can figure things out for ourselves as long as someone gives us the facts straight.

For conservatives who for years have felt victimized by the Fourth Estate, the findings are perhaps no surprise. Even in Republican circles these days, there aren’t too many tears of anger prompted by Katie Couric’s “mainstream” coverage. Of course, it helps that no one’s watching her anyway, and the so-called “mainstream” newspapers are going the way of the passenger pigeon.

A classic example of this bias is the media’s non-rush to report John Edwards’ extramarital dalliance until the former Democratic presidential candidate himself paved the way for coverage by giving an interview to ABC’s Nightline. Of course, everyone already knew the Edwards saga from reading about it on the Internet, but now at least it has been sanctioned by the Big Media. Contrast this with the 24/7 coverage of a certain conservative GOP senator’s “wide stance,” and you’ll see why Republicans remain a bit wary of the media.

Consider some of Rasmussen’s other findings in recent weeks:

-- While only one-third of Americans think this country has the world’s best economy, 50% believe the U.S. media makes our current economic situation look worse than it really is.

-- Sixty-eight percent of voters think most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win.

-- Nearly half of voters (49%) believe most reporters are trying to help Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama win the election. Of course, the extensive coverage of Obama’s travels abroad last month, including the three major network anchors rushing across the Atlantic to touch the hem of his garment, probably didn’t help.

-- Ironically, more voters think the media tries to be unbiased (24%) than believe it would help a Republican. Only 14% of those polled say most reporters will try to help John McCain win.

Noting growing Democratic fears about Obama’s failure to rise in the polls despite months of adulatory media treatment, columnist Dick Morris patiently explained, “Never has the disjuncture between coverage and reality loomed quite so large as it does in this race. You get one image from the media and a totally different one from the polling.”

And not just Rasmussen polling, by the way.

Gallup reported in late July that 39% of respondents to one of its polls saw media coverage of Obama’s foreign travels as unfairly positive, four percent more, in fact, than the number who had a positive opinion of the overall trip itself. Thirty-two percent saw coverage of McCain as unfairly negative.

A survey by the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, released in January, found that “just 19.6 percent of those surveyed could say they believe all or most news media reporting. This is down from 27.4 percent in 2003.”

Even a Pew poll in early June found that “nearly four-in-ten (37%) say that in covering the Democratic race, news organizations have been biased toward Obama while just 8% say they have been biased toward [Hillary] Clinton.”

For the record, it’s important to note that liberals have taken solace in the findings of Bob Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University that ABC, NBC and CBS offered more negative comments about Obama than about McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign. Seems they don’t like it when the bias runs against them any more than conservatives do.