Don’t pick fights with those who buy ink by the barrel goes the political adage. Yet despite this unwritten political rule two candidates are at war this week with the press.

It is no surprise that John McCain is one of them. The New York Times ran a story insinuating an improper relationship between him and a female lobbyist. Mr. McCain denied the story and rallied a conservative base behind him. Ever since Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, denounced the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” running against mainstream news outlets has been a routine for the Right.

The other target, Hillary Clinton, is more unexpected. Television pundits and newspaper columnists are beating a daily drum of bad news for Mrs. Clinton: the stories are that the voters don’t like her, her tactics aren’t working, and her opponent’s popularity is approaching messianic proportions. The press is quickly becoming the object of the Clintons camps’ anger.

Things may be looking grim for Senator Clinton, but her supporters expressed admiration for Mrs. Clinton’s tenacious personality and confidence that her mix of policy positions and substantive experience will bring her victory in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island on March 4. Outside a fundraiser in Boston on Sunday night, a group of six Hillary Clinton loyalists, women above the age of 40, carried signs and tried to rev up attendees on their way into the fundraiser. “Hillary never quits. She’s a fighter. I’m with her every step of the way,” vowed a resident of Hillsdale, N.Y., Frances Fusco, who was in town visiting her sister. “It’s not up to the media to say when this race is over,” Ms. Fusco said. She was joined by Mary Callahan of Newton, Mass., who came over to say that Senator Obama “has been given a total free pass.”

Two elected female officials inside the event hall turned their fire on the press as well. “I’m angry because an incredible, intelligent, qualified potential leader has been marginalized,” the sheriff of Suffolk County, Andrea Cabral, said. “You expect your opponent to do that. You don’t expect the press to be complicit.” The president of the Massachusetts State senate, Therese Murray, said in her remarks at the fundraiser that it was hard to find a favorable story of Mrs. Clinton in the press: “you can’t get a good story … it’s four pages all about Barack and one story about what Hillary did wrong.”

A good measure of the ire at the event was directed at those who report on, opine about, or satirize the news. Early on in her remarks to a smaller group of donors prior to the main event, Senator Clinton seized on her sense that the press and others only had negative sights set on her. She theorized that this might be changing as next week’s key primaries are approaching.

“I just have this sense that finally, my opponent is getting a little bit of scrutiny,” she said. “How many of you saw Saturday Night Live last night? How many of you saw Cokie Roberts on the morning show?” she asked donors referring to a comedy sketch ridiculing last week’s CNN debate that depicted the news network’s personnel as being explicitly worshipful of Mr. Obama.

“This wasn’t happening a couple of weeks ago, where people are starting to say ‘hey, you know, we’ve got two candidates. We’ve been a little more focused on one than the other in terms of asking the tough questions and looking hard at the record. Let’s start looking at both of them because the voters … deserve to have a real election.’ We’re going to have another eight days, including another debate in Ohio. I just have this feeling about people starting to say: ‘I want to make up my own mind.'”

There is some merit to the claims that the press is not giving Mrs. Clinton a fair shake. There also is no doubt that some in the pundit class, particularly Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, appear gleeful at the success of her opponent. As early as the night prior to the New Hampshire primary, the press corps gathered to observe a massive pep rally attended by the former president and first lady and circled her campaign like vultures in hopes of sparing the nation of a Clinton dynasty.

And it’s also true that tough stories about Mr. Obama are in short supply. Mr. Obama has skated over the press so far because he represents something they love: novelty, the heart of news. He is the classic underdog facing the “inevitable” opponent, an element to a story the press never tires of.

Whether or not there are those in the press who are consciously or unconsciously favoring Mr. Obama, most voters don’t typically cast their ballot according to a pundit or talk show host. Senator Clinton’s last battle may be against the press.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.