Will there be ‘World Tour’ T-shirts?

The media are ramping up for a weeklong ‘event’ covering Sen. Barack Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe. He may have snuck out on Saturday morning, but reporters and camera crews have either caught up with him, or are packing and heading that way. The major network anchors will be hosting the evening news all week from Obama’s current location.

Some media critics are already calling it a circus. Like Howard Kurtz just did on CNN with Lou Dobbs. Which is a continuation of what Kurtz said a couple of days ago on another program.

CNN personalities Jack Cafferty and Howard Kurtz made a sudden confession of the mainstream media’s imbalanced coverage of Barack Obama versus John McCain on Thursday’s “The Situation Room.” First, in his 5 pm Eastern hour “The Cafferty File,” Cafferty labeled the media’s planned coverage of Obama’s first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee an “extravaganza.”

It will be dramatic.

Besides giving the details of the major differences in coverage between the two presumptive presidential candidates,

they noticed?

Cafferty gave the scope of the demand in the mainstream media to cover Obama’s trip overseas: “All three broadcast network anchors will join him, broadcasting their nightly newscasts from stops along his route. Also along, to record Obama’s every move, are top political reporters from major newspapers and magazines all over the country. Two hundred journalists requested to accompany Obama on the trip. But the campaign says they’re only going to be able to accommodate about 20 percent of that number, or around 40 or so.”

Then Kurtz weighed in:

Of course, it’s always big news when a presumed presidential nominee travels abroad, right? Wrong — John McCain has taken three trips abroad to Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Colombia, and Mexico in the last four months. No anchors tagged along. In fact, some broadcast and cable networks didn’t even send correspondents on some of these trips. The imbalance doesn’t end there. Obama has received more than twice as much air time as McCain on the network evening newscasts since last month, although more coverage doesn’t always mean positive coverage. Obama, who is on the cover of Newsweek again this week, has been on Time or Newsweek’s cover a dozen times in the last three years, more than twice the amount of McCain. And in some venues, Obama and his wife Michelle on the cover of Us Weekly, Obama and his family on Access Hollywood. It’s not even close.

This is stating the obvious. But few are stating it besides these guys.

With Obama expected to draw big crowds in Europe next week, McCain may struggle to stay in the headlines. Now, journalists say much of this is driven by the novelty factor. Obama is a new player on the world stage, while McCain has been making international trips for decades. But at what point does that become unfair?

It already is. At what point will it matter?