Slashdot Mirror
Press Favored Obama Throughout Campaign
narcberry writes "After complaints of one-sided reporting, the Washington Post checked their own articles and agreed. Obama was clearly favored, throughout his campaign, in terms of more favorable articles, less criticism, better page real-estate, more pictures, and total disregard for problems such as his drug use. 'Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics. The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama's battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that. McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.'"
I'm glad someone is finally stating the obvious.
Is there any surprise? The media (with the exception of Fox News) has always had a pretty large liberal bias.
Having said that, Obama is young, charismatic, and is promoting the change America wants. He would have won either way.
...the voters. Isn't it natural that the winning candidate will appeal to the journalists more aswell, than the losing one? Especially in a historic election as this one.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
What is really surprising is that this is news! The media has admitted to this weeks ago.
Even worse, you will see people deny that Obama was given better treatment than McCain. They will probably say something similar to that old Politico story that basically says, "We had to give Obama better coverage. It's not our fault that McCain sucks".
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I don't see this as evidence of bias on the part of reporters, I see it at evidence of the Democratic Primary running as long as it did.
Also, the Republican campaign(s) threw a lot of mud which of course prompted coverage. If Mccain hadn't put Obama in the news so much, he wouldn't have been in the new so much. If the accusations had more merit the resulting coverage wouldn't have been as positive as it was.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Of course there was a more favorable approach towards Obama, for all the reasons stated in the summary. I'd like to see a like-for-like comparison of Obama and McCain stories before the Republican sideshows of Sarah Palin and "Joe the Plumber" were introduced, because I did feel a lot more hate once they were on-board
The press over here in England still seem to be focused on the historic occasion of an African-American in power. It is a good thing and it has been noted, but I wish they would get back to focusing on how the right man won, regardless of race and what he is planning to do come January.
I ditched the TV 20 years ago, and the newspaper 5 years ago. I don't understand why anyone listens to the "main stream media" anymore. My in-laws think everything they see on TV "news" is Gospel, however.
Obama ran a better campaign?
Better campaigns get better press coverage. I know that sounds crazy, but generally people doing a good job get better reviews then people doing a bad job.
Of course, in the eyes of the idiocracy that is the modern Republican party, doing a good job is evil, and reporting on it is bias.
The goal of the media to sell advertising and papers. They do this by 'sexing' up the news as much as possible to make people want to read it. If it bleeds, it leads as they say. Why read boring stories about real substance when you can read Exciting! Stories! About Stars!
So its no surprise Obama had more favorabe coverage. He was by far the 'sexier' candidate.
(Tho Palin was hotter)
Do the numbers factor in Sarah Palin at all? I'm too lazy to sign up for the Post.
She was in the news quite a bit, at least a HECK of a lot more than Biden. I'm not saying her press was "good" but there was a lot of it.
Comparing Obama+Biden vs McCain+Palin probably results in closer numbers.
Besides, are we really surprised? Obama running as the Democrat nominee was history in the making. Of course he would get more press.
That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".
That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.
The election is done and over with. You can sleep now. [2]
And how exactly is this "News for Nerds" or, most importantly, "Stuff that Matters"????
What if all those stories were negative?
Isn't any pre-election article about one candidate also pretty much an article about their opponent(s)?
If I read an article about Candidate A concerning Issue X, isn't that article likely to mention Candidate B's stance on Issue X as well?
What if one candidate simply had more reportable news?
Simply having a greater number of stories written about you means absolutely nothing. If I'm a staunchly against Candidate A, it doesn't really matter how many stories I read about Candidate A's support of issues I disagree with... I'm still going to disagree with them. The Washington Post, I would say, has a fairly informed readership. There aren't many people that read it that are going to be making up their mind so close to an election.
sig.
the sky is blue and water is wet.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Because the definition of "Nerd" has changed to somehow include the "Starbucks Mac Writers"
I'd say you've pretty much nailed it with that comment. A lot of the coverage of Obama was prompted by attacks that he was "pallin' around with terrorists" and whatnot. The press investigated, found that the concerns were baseless, and the result was what ammounts to a positive story for Obama. Then, of course, McCain keeps up the attacks and the press writes what ammounts to a negative story about how McCain is slinging mud on the campaign trail. It's not really that the press was biased (though I will give you that the media does tend to have a leftist tilt), so much as that they covered what was happening on the election trail. How was anyone supposed to spin the facts as a positive story for McCain? Obama, on the other hand, didn't give the press much chance to cover McCain. His attacks were far fewer, and according to most fact checkers nearly every one of them had merit.
One of the candidates (Obama) was a lot more newsworthy than the other, and the news coming out of both campaigns was decidedly different. You can't blame the press if MacCain campaign was all about a self-described "pitbull with lipstick" "hockey mom" with a $150K campaign wardrobe, a secessionist husband, and foreign policy experience that consisted of a geographical proximity to Russia. It's not the press making it up when McCain in rapid succession says he knows nothing about the economy, asserts that it is fundamentally sound, then suspends his campaign because he's so important in rescuing it (only to sit there silent in the meeting then return to his campaign). The press didn't make this stuff up - even the $150K clothes was somthing that was emphasized by disgruntled McCain insiders. The whole McCain campaign was about negativity - trying to shoot Obama down - while Obama's was much more positive - about change and hope and the future. You can't blame the press for reflecting the tone of the campaigns or reporting on their self-generated news (Joe the non-business-purchasing, non-plumber was even on the campaign trail with McCain), nor can you blame them for runnning more stories on the more newsworthy candidate. The press should be reporting on the news - they're not meant to be suppressing the differences and reporting both in equal column inches and in equally glowing terms ("Will Ameria elect historic first septuagenarian as president?", "Hitler sees bright future for germany!").
..."Reality has a strong liberal bias."
My take on this is that Obama's candidacy and success were in fact more newsworthy than McCain's. Obama changed the game in a lot of ways, both in terms of who he is and how he ran. McCain was more of a known quantity to begin with, and ran a fairly ordinary race. In fact, the most remarkable thing about McCain's campaign (apart from the stunt-casting VP pick, which generated plenty of news)was that it was so painfully typical, where McCain used to do things more his own way.
In short, if McCain had made more news, he might have gotten more headlines. Instead, he was mostly yesterday's news.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Indeed, journalism is dead. The only difference between the "mainstream media" and conservative talk radio is that the radio people are more honest, as in they admit that what they are doing is opinion, and state plainly their stances whilst the old media pretends to be "unbiased".
BTW, could it be that people are waking up to this have something to do with ALL the major newspapers losing circulation rapidly, and the Big 3 networks also continuing to lose viewers? Fox News is #1 not because they are any less biased, but because they ALONE in major media gives voice to the other side.
Corporatism != Free Market
Here's a personal account of an election worker in Iowa dealing with voter "purges":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/precinct_elections_official/
Do not start talking about "fair" without also addressing those purges.
And from TFA:
So you're talking about a difference of 160 stories. Over almost a year. Let's just call it a year. That means we're talking about a difference of less than 1 story every two days.
Meanwhile, McCain's 786 stories equates to just over 2 stories every day for a year.
Compared to Obama's 946 which equates to ... just over 2 stories every day for a year.
But every THIRD day, Obama would get THREE stories and McCain would only get TWO stories.
Yeah, and you're going to complain about the press "favored" Obama?
Sure, you can survey the number of times this candidate was mentioned in a positive or negative light and give an `objective' metric to compare to other candidates. The problem is that such a methodology ignores whether or not a candidate deserves those positive or negative mentions. To take extreme cases, consider either Alaska's Ted Stevens or Louisiana's William Jefferson. One would claim that if media coverage of these two men wasn't disproportionately negative that this would show bias. Sometimes a candidate is deserving of being attacked (or lauded) more frequently than his or her opponent.
While listening to NPR, I was struck by how one-sided the coverage was. The pinnacle of the disparity had to be when, during a segment on McCain, barely mentioned McCain's but they stated Obama's positions in detail.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
At least this election the people went for someone with a more wholesome family background. It might be a step in the right direction.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Why, then, are we expecting that the bizarre campaign of a man who is a shadow of who he was running with an uninformed hatemonger and which wants to continue
would get as much positive press as a smooth campaign by two qualified candidates running on a platform of
Sometimes the reason the story is positive is because the subject is positive.
If you have watched the campaigns of both McCain and Obama, there is also a clear difference in what has been said on both sides. It was even more clear for the month leading up to the election.
The Obama campaign has spent the most time saying what Barack Obama felt were the solutions to the problems, and talking about the problems out there. There was very little McCain/Palin bashing from the campaign. It may have been the press coverage, but I didn't see the Obama camp really stirring up anti-McCain feelings with fairly few advertisements saying why people should not vote for McCain.
On the other hand, EVERY rally that McCain and Palin were at showed no solutions, just reasons why they said not to vote for Obama. This shows why McCain lost, because he didn't show he was focused on why people should vote for him.
So, in the press, why should they cover, "Republican candidate bashes Obama but says nothing about how to deal with the issues" day in and day out? If McCain was more presidential BEFORE his concession speech, he would have done better.
Also, when a candidate ONLY focuses on his/her "base", it makes anyone not in that group feel that there is no reason to support that person. If people in the press have a normal bias toward a more moderate to liberal candidate, then those who are focused on ONLY targeting the conservative people, it just makes for there being no real news if that conservative candidate doesn't say anything new.
Did McCain EVER talk about having real solutions, or just how people should be afraid of having Obama as president?
But the reactions here (on Slashdot) to articles about the candidates various technological positions did seem to do fairly well from a "number of comments" point of view.
I'd say that this is more a matter of the same phenomena that we see in every election now. The "pundits" talk about whatever is easiest for them to talk about. And they're words get coverage because it's easier for the "reporters" to just regurgitate whatever they've heard.
So, rather than research a subject and ask INFORMED questions of the candidates THEMSELVES we get the topic de jour from the pundits, then echoed by the reporters, then echoed by other reporters and then echoed by other pundits. Since all of the pundits and reporters are talking about it, it MUST be an important issue, right?
I think that is why we saw so many websites pop up this election that did independent fact-checking of the candidates' public statements.
Being apologetic is not a sign of cowardice. It is actually a sign of great courage that many leaders have the skill to do so.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
So, to summarize, the world is interested in a youngish, articulate man and some woman in a tight skirt - but doesn't care about some old fart! Sounds like everyone, everywhere to me.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
...that maybe there were more favorable articles about him because he's actually a better person...?
Naw... can't be that. Must be media bias.
I love this line: "The Post did nothing on Obama's acknowledged drug use as a teenager."
Maybe because we're finally getting away from considering a person's past drug use as a delimiter of what kind of person they are?
The past two presidents before Obama have been admitted drug users, and they still got voted in.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The young, photogenic, would-be first black President gets more attention than the puffy old white guy? Say it ain't so, America, say it ain't so!
Of course, this is also easily explained by the fact that reality has a liberal bias.
You first.
Actually, I hadn't read a single news story or even vanity post claiming that the 2008 election was stolen. I searched New Republic at your suggestion and finally located one solitary thread - as I write this, 13 replies asserted "scams" of some type, mostly ACORN related (only 1 person flatly said that the election was "stolen"); 16 asserted the voters just made a "bad" choice; 5 blamed the economy, McCain or the Republican party in general; and 17 were not directly related to the loss (including an oddly amusing short thread as to whether Texas such secede again).
No, I don't think Republicans are responding to this election as Democrats did in 2004, for two reasons. First, no single state would have swung this election, as Ohio would have in 2004. And second, Republicans don't seem as whiny to me as Democrats, possibly because Democrats rely on others (usually the government) to solve problems, and Republicans (used to, at least) rely on individual initiative. Of course, that last observation might be slightly controversial... ;-)
Obama makes a major speech on race, lauded by all sides, which is dully reported by the media. Did Obama dominate the headlines for a week round that, under a positive light? You betcha.
McCain "rushes" to Washington, suspends his campaign and accomplishes exactly nothing, which is dully reported under a negative light? of course!
This isn't media bias. It is candidates getting their just desserts.
Media bias would be if McCain had given a historic speech, defining his candidacy away from Bush, Rove and the religious right and it didn't get reported. But that, my friends, never happened.
You mean other than the invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, the general role of the UN, stability in the middle east, climate change, an greenhouse gas reduction? Or do I need to farther back than five years?
Ah yes. That would be the Illuminati. Best keep that one quiet.
I know this may be shocking, but in the world beyond the US, people have more than just satellite recievers. They have actual cameras and transmitters.
I've even heard that people who live there have 'opinions', and that these vary from region to region or even person to person.
Thank you for playing. Now go study up on your John Locke.
The press is not free because the current government allows it, but because representative government requires it. Without free speech and the free press, there are no other freedoms.
People are not so dumb as you think.
"Nerds" are not wholly unaffected by government. It's unfortunate, but true.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Suddenly, I'm no longer so sure that absolute freedom of the press is such a good idea any more.
We need to pass some laws regarding news media ownership and operation:
1. No business doing business with the United States is allowed to own any media outlet. GE couldn't own NBC, for example.
2. Restore the old telecom rules that made national players like Clear Channel illegal.
3. No owning more than one outlet per media type in a single market. You may have one TV station, one radio station, one newspaper, not a dozen of each.
4. Expand public broadcasting and remove all political oversight.
Something I've been arguing for a while now is that our mass-marketing culture is a slow-rot poison eating away at our souls. The Bangladeshi micro-lending guy, Muhammad_Yunus feels the same way. He's a big proponent of social businesses, you can think of them as "for-profit charities" designed to be self-sustaining, reinvesting profits into the social work they are performing. He argued for a bit of culture-jamming on their part, putting out positive propaganda for positive living. Of course, the first reaction is "I don't want to be propagandized by anyone" and the response is "You're already being propagandized by the for-profits."
I was raised in a Christian household and I'm sick of hearing about the evils of Hollywood this, the evils of rock and roll that, DC being a pit of slime because people haven't accepted Jesus into their hearts. "We need a moral code, one based on Judeo-christian ethics! How can you live apart from God?" Makes me want to vomit. But this doesn't mean they don't have a point. They are defining a real problem, just coming up with the wrong solution, kind of like how a rabble-rouser will do a good job of accurately describing how awful the economy is and then inaccurately defines the root of those problems as the Jew. We do lack a moral basis and standards in this country. I'm 100% for sex in or out of marriage with whoever you want, as long as you're adults and consent, who cares? But our culture twists sex into things it shouldn't be, fashioning reins tipped with sharp hooks to plunge into our libidos and jerk us this way and that at the whims of the market. It poisons our understanding of and expectations for sex, human relationships, the very way we valuate what should be most dear to us. We're sexualizing the kids these days, little girls running around with "come molest me" togs. We're telling them they have to fit preconceived and narrowly-defined body types, the sum of your worth is defined by what you consume, roll that clip from Fight Club, etc.
I reject the notion that religion is needed as the basis of sound system of morals and ethics. The whole moral relativism argument about us having sex with children and box turtles if we don't have the bible is bunk. I will borrow just two religious axioms: (1) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and (2) And it harm none, do what thou wilt. You will not be able to present a problem that cannot be resolved by going back to those two rules. But I think I've kind of drifted away from the original point here. :)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
'cause so did I.
You're overlooking one critical aspect of responsibility: it's not an external decision imposed on you. It's an internal decision you impose on yourself.
Yes, the First Amendment gives you the right to say almost anything you care to. Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is an example of something the First Amendment does not give you the right to do. The example of the Westboro Baptist Church, on the other hand, is something that is protected under First Amendment rights.
Where does responsibility meet the First Amendment? In the first case, by not spreading false and potentially harmful information. In the second case... there's no act of responsibility behind that particular organization's communications.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
If the Democrats had nominated an old guy who'd been around forever and the Republicans had nominated someone fresh and dynamic whose candidacy was historic, the coverage disparity would have been the other way around. It's a mistake to say this is evidence of media liberal bias. Obama was simply more newsworthy and interesting.
Actually, it's not. To be responsible for something is precisely to be answerable for it.
I opened this thread expecting one thing: to see a bunch of replies saying, in a nutshell, "It isn't biased if it is true." Pretty much what I am seeing here. Obama is the most unvetted President in recent history, and you all know it. The media didn't investigate because they didn't want to. We all know, however, how much Palin spent on clothes and that a plumber in Toledo doesn't have a license.
"Drug use" would not be seen as a problem. ALL of us use drugs. The only difference is that the government approves of some of those drugs (alcohol, caffeine, etc.) but not others (cocaine, marijuana, etc.)
A much bigger problem is Obama's long track record of shredding Constitutionally guaranteed rights as a senator . . and his announced intention of doing so even further. Not that the Repugs have been/would be much if any better.
But the biggest problem by far is not them, but us. It is that we as a nation were willing to elect anyone, of either party, who has amply demonstrated his or her willingness to violate the very rights they are sworn to protect. It is our willingness to give up liberty in exchange for the illusory promise of "security" or "prosperity" or anything else. Without liberty there can be neither of those things in the first place. What has made our nation weak, sick, vulnerable, and poor is the fact that we allow and even insist that others rule over and provide for us, rather than each of us ruling and providing for ourselves and our own loved ones. Until that changes, we can only expect things to get worse, not better, regardless of who is elected, and regardless of how many non-government-approved drugs he or she did or did not ingest.
Nonaggression works!
Funny how nobody has stopped to ask... but WTF is this story doing on Slashdot? If I wanted useless partisan bickering over a news story (about news stories) I would go to Yahoo's message boards.
Oh wait, even they figured out that hosting an open forum on the Internet about politics is like giving angry monkeys a bucket of poop. That's why there's no more comments section on articles.
"News for nerds." Let's stick with that.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Of the old media, newspapers are the best. You can get right and left versions, and you will usually find the info they would rather hide buried at the end of the 3rd continuation of the article on page 25. There is still some remnant of journalistic integrity.
TV, by its very nature, can only present a tiny slice of information. So the reporter has to be highly selective in what information he presents. The selection process is highly biased, no matter how objective the reporter tries to be. And these days, they don't try. So it is nearly impossible to get a non-misleading snapshot of events from TV, whether Fox or NBC. And then there are the outright fabrications (CBS).
I dropped newspapers because it was more trouble to chase down the crucial facts they try to hide (but feel compelled to include somewhere) than it was to google for opposing views. When google figures out how to politically bias search results (if they haven't already), then we are really in trouble.
Oh for the *really* old media (1960), where reporters were determined to get to the bottom of a story, and looked for the dirt on *all* the candidates. Or maybe that picture was fabricated by Hollywood. I wasn't alive back then.
And that's the fault of the government-run school system, which trains children to believe only government can provide a solution, not the People acting individually (from the bottom up).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
After the whole contemptible "freedom fries" thing, it may have also been that the international community knew that disagreeing with us was pointless, and stopped doing it quite so much.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
... something like "There is class warfare alright, and my class is winning."
Stick that red-baiting up yours.
/ (very) small biz owner
You're right - I never saw a "Not My President" sticker in the last 8 years. I never saw an offensive slogan about "end of an error - 1/20/2009" and I never saw any childish bumperstickers comparing the US President's last name with female genitalia. The Democrats of the past 8 year were such good losers.
Oh wait
Please, make a mental tally how many times you'll see these offensive things in the next 4 years. Also, keep in mind, how many times it will be called racism if you don't support President-Elect Obama.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I'm generally bothered when folks trot out statistics claiming that the news media ran more negative articles/clips on one side of an argument than the other, and thus is hopelessly biased. What law of nature says that "fair" coverage has to have a balance between positive and negative for the two sides? If one side strays farther from reality on verifiable, important things, the news media should call them on that. The media shouldn't pick a side a priori, but it also has a responsibility to speak up when the facts are clear (which, admittedly, they aren't always).
That said, I'm not going to argue that there is no bias in the media, nor that the recent election cycle was completely fair. If nothing else, Obama had a huge structural advantage in news coverage because he was vastly "newer" in numerous different ways. I'm sure the personal views of the news staff play some role as well. This study of the Washington Post is unusually comprehensive and interesting.
The above should be taken as a more general rant about this kind of tit-for-tat comparison, whether trotted out by Fox News to attack the "liberal media" or in "balanced" science pieces where a crackpot gets as much airtime as legitimate science. I just don't find this general metric for judging bias particularly compelling.
If you ask me, treating the People (with the strange capital letter P) as one body is already a step in ther wrong direction. The people don't hold any one thing in common other than the fact that we're humans, and we live inside the same country. Saying that we all have some common best interest or collective opinion in any one case is akin to claiming that your somehow better off than someone in another country because you happen to live closer to some winning olympic athelete than they do. The U.S. is a collection of individuals. Contrary to popular belief, implementing the rule of the majority always ignores the minority. The specific cases requiring actual available facts to be considered are always abandoned in favor of those that require sweeping generalization and ideaology instead. Perhaps it's this constant reliance on tugging at the heartstrings of the so-called supposed majority that leads to most if not all of the friction we have in dealing with our local 'bretheren.'
I think America is the greatest place to live in the world, but that doesn't mean I think it's perfect. Some people are more qualified to make policy than others. (I don't claim to be one of them, but I do concede there are indeed experts out there.) Honestly, would you take a poll of public opinion as to whether or not we should operate to remove half of your liver? Why is it any different for things like who runs the government?
That all being said, I can't think of a better way to do it. *Shrug*
Speak for yourself.
And second, Republicans don't seem as whiny to me as Democrats, possibly because Democrats rely on others (usually the government) to solve problems, and Republicans (used to, at least) rely on individual initiative. Of course, that last observation might be slightly controversial... ;-)
Controversial, but true. Look at the 2008 Prop. 8 demonstrations that are ongoing. While this is arguably one of the only things the Democrats lost, they can't accept it, even though it was a landslide. When Democrats lose, they throw a pity party, file lawsuits, and protest. When Republicans lose they generally blame their party, others in their party, and themselves. There are plenty of things the Republicans could be screaming about, including Obama's campaign financing (foreign money, lax security and name checking, etc..) but that's largely not happening. Before the close of polling, the Democrats were already talking about suing Virginia if they lost. It's pretty pathetic, really.
I think, more than anything, it's endemic of their supporters. As a Republican, when I see someone more successful than myself, I ask myself, what can I do to rise up to their level, and compete. I think that Democrats, instead ask, what can I do to reduce them to my level, and make them bring me up to theirs.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
It wasn't an issue of "balance", the Obama visit was simply the bigger story.
And generally, Obama was a far bigger story than McCain. I mean, "My God, our next president may well be an elderly white man who married into money! Who'd have ever thought that such a thing could happen!" honestly doesn't make for such an interesting news discussion.
If journalists were discussing the potential significance of someone with Obama's background becoming president, it was difficult not to be positive. It was difficult to think of as much positive material relating to the idea of someone with McCain's background becoming president.
So Obama's campaign won a lot of positive news coverage by providing news stories that were difficult not to cover positively.
Where the situations were reversed was with the choice of VP. Biden was a hellishly boring VP candidate, and consequently didn't get much coverage. Old white guy with worthy credentials and a lot of tedious experience. Snore. Nothing to see, move along.
McCain OTOH deliberately chose an "exiting" VP candidate, and consequently got huge amounts of media coverage off the back of it.
Unfortunately for the McCain camp, there was a lot more to say about Palin that was potentially negative than potentially positive, and even a lot of republicans winced at the idea of "President Palin", because the person honestly didn't seem to know enough to be considered presidential material. And Palin seemed to love the attention - the McCain people couldn't complain that news people were putting undue emphasis on Palin, because that's why McCain chose Palin - to get headlines and try to stir up some excitement. But other than McCain himself, it was difficult to find anyone in the Republican Party with any experience who was prepared to stand in front of a camera and declare that they thought that Palin would actually be a competent President if anything should happen to McCain. So that then generated a further tendency for negative stories about the McCain campaign compared to the Obama campaign, and that in turn generated discussions about the relative judgement of the two candidates, since Obama was generally considered to have run an excellent campaign despite his relative inexperience, and since McCain seemed to have made at least one critical error, in his VP choice.
If that was the situation, then reporters were obliged to report on it. They weren't obliged to try to impose a corrective bias onto the news in order to force an artificial 50:50 balance in airtime, if the available stories and information didn't justify that balance.
Eric Baird
I thought that one of the first things you learn in Journalism is to be objective when reporting the news. I barely saw that element throughout the whole political coverage. People were so much tougher on McCain when asking him about issues than they were about Obama. It's almost as if people were afraid of making him mad. Also, I didn't think it was right seeing journalists cry when reporting that Obama won. While I realize that it was an historic moment for the country, journalists are supposed to, again, remain objective. Yes, we're all human and we're all emotional, but I don't like turning on the TV and watching someone report the news with such a bias for the candidate he obviously wanted to win. I really don't think that there are any TV outlets (or newspapers for that matter) that are unbiased. They always seem to lean one way. How are people supposed to make an informative decision if people are telling them to go in a certain direction?
You want to talk about bias? How about they report how many stories were done about the Green, Independent or Libertarian candidates; or any of the other 33 viable political parties in this country?
No, the press is biased. Period. Where I see it is in their dumbing down of America to just a two party system (neither of which was popular until the 20th century.)
America is screwed until we as a people realize that there are many of ways of thinking and solutions don't just boil down to tax the rich or fear of war.
Politics is not just dems vs GOP, not just taxes vs military, not just abortion vs God. Politics is not a zero-sum game.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Controversial because it's complete crap
There, fixed that for you. Since you've been in a coma for the last few months, there was this massive bailout of Wall Street backed by financial conservatives.
Look at the 2008 Prop. 8 demonstrations that are ongoing. While this is arguably one of the only things the Democrats lost, they can't accept it, even though it was a landslide.
Since when is 51.8% a "landslide"? You must have been talking about Bush's "mandate" after the 2004 election, even though the electoral vote was 286 to 251 and Bush had the lowest popular vote margin for an incumbent president in a century.
There are plenty of things the Democrats could be screaming about, including McCain breaking the campaign finance law that bears his name, or the low income voters suddenly finding thousands of dollars to max out their donations
Fixed that too.
Amazing how everyone can agree that in the last decades pretty much all public values and personal virtues degrading.
Amazing how it all coincides with abandonment of the Christian religion and its morals.
Actually, if you looked at the real world you'd have noticed that it coincided with the rise of religious fundamentalism in politics in the US. There's a reason that the founding fathers explicitly rejected religious nuttery as a basis for government. You, in fact, just pointed out exactly why.
"Christian morals" is an oxymoron.