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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.'"
To the US, much of Western Europe (minus perhaps the BBC) appears hilariously liberal - this coming from a regular reader of the NY Times (and who lives in New York) and someone who voted for Obama.
I do emphasize 'appears,' though, because I don't think this necessarily means there is a bias on the part of the reporters or the editors. By any objective measure I can think of, Obama was incredibly newsworthy. I wanted to vote for McCain (I'm a small business owner) but I couldn't stomach Palin; still, McCain received plenty of coverage around here. I think that the newspapers do their best to report stuff that they think is newsworthy, and having some arbitrary rule like 'we must publish an equal number of pieces about each candidate' is the type of gesture-laden but meaningless decision that is all too regular these days -- and it would ultimately result in fluff pieces or lowering the standards of what makes the news just so you get an even count.
My biggest beef with the NY Times is that, particularly since Obama was elected, it's been piece after piece about the 'barrier-breaking' historical significance of the event; the guy has gotten a big pass on making substantive policy statements just because he's such a 'game-changer.' I don't mean to take away the gravitas of the historical situation, but I think we've been congratulating ourselves so much on our enlightened stance that we've indirectly said that, had we elected McCain instead, it would've been nothing more than backwards racism at work (since electing Obama was so forward-thinking of us). We get quotes from people around the world like 'There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader' (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/reactions-from-around-the-world/?scp=3&sq=america%20president%20rest%20of%20world%20follow&st=cse) and similar comments praising the basic fact of the event itself.
So it comes as no surprise to me that McCain would have to work twice as hard to get attention from such a 'landmark' event. I like and respect Obama, and I'm very interested to see how he'll do - but I think we let him skate by, particularly in the debates, with a lot of vague promises. I'll celebrate him being a game-changer once the game has actually changed.
As for your original point, though, a (more liberal) friend of mine pointed out that, even in spite of the semi-regular absence of substance -- these were campaign promises, after all, and he's hardly alone in making vague ones -- there is an unavoidable perk in our reputation abroad not because Obama is a proven diplomat (he isn't) but because he's not George Bush and not a Republican.
Sometimes, I really wonder if any of you people "get out" and "see the world".
You want liberal bias? Watch or listen to PBS/NPR?
Although that said, it was NPRs in depth coverage of who Obama
actually is and where he actually came from that started to
demystify him considerably. If you scratch beneath the surface
he seems a lot less unreal (imagine that).
This is a good example of how journalists should be providing
a lot of useful information, so much so that there's enough
real information there to allow the audience to make up their
own mind and counteract whatever bias might be obvious in those
presenting it.
Enough information will eventually destroy all bias.
Of course Americans tend to be lazy and generally anti-intellectual.
So if the news is anything more than a sound bit or two it might just
get filtered out. Commercial media has to account for this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Funny, I find MSNBC less biased than CNN. Perhaps conservatives and liberals perceive bias differently :-) But the slant I noticed on CNN was elegant and subtle. Not only were they unlikely to run a positive story on McCain, but if they did then all other stories on the main page would be negative. If the biz section had a downbeat story on the economy, then the political section would have a McCain story. If the Science section told of some breakthrough, they would run an Obama story in National or Politics. Stories also ran for very arbitrary periods of time... negative stories could stay on the page for weeks unchanged. Positive stories lasted half a day to two days. I think there was an intentional effort on CNN's part to paint the public mood as gloomy as possible, which helped Obama.
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported. The new outlets only mentioned his negative stuff. Obama had *lots* of attacks on McCain but he was getting a lot more coverage so it didnt appear as if thats all he was saying.
But then the "red" states would suffer. You see, they take from the economically more productive "blue" states, on average. It is ironic that the GOP whines about income redistribution, when their states benefit from it.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192719/index.htm
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported.
If we're doing things in all fairness, then I should also point out that there's a difference between "McCain/Obama" ads and ads run by "McCain/Obama" supporters.
A lot of negative ads run against McCain/Obama were not directly from McCain/Obama but supporters of McCain/Obama.
Then, of course, we need to talk about money. When one side spends 3/4 to 1 on ads (Obama to McCain), it gives them a lot better ability to change their ratio of positive/negative advertising.
If, for example, McCain ran 10 negative ads and 10 positive ads and Obama runs 15 negative ads but 40 positive ads, Obama has actually run more negative ads but at a smaller ratio.
Hehe, maybe that's why the major media outlets loved him? He gave them a ton of money in advertisement.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
I disagree with the NPR crack. I do agree that in the circle of my conservative friends, cracking on NPR as liberal is a common theme. But I listen to NPR and they work very hard to be non-biased. You rarely detect it in their stories or how they conduct their interviews. Sometimes you do though like Terry Gross blunder of an interview with Mrs. Cheney.
I, however, am a Liberal. I fully recognize the MSNBC bias and admit it as much as I recognize the Fox bias. Both networks have some good shows, and some clowns. Just because I am liberal does not mean I don't see a biased show for what it is. I wonder though if conservatives can tell the same.
I used to think McCain would make a good president but not anymore. He ran a bad campaign. If you cant run a campaign and drive your people, your not looking good to be running the executive. McCain of 2000/2004 would have made a good president. McCain before he sold his soul to the Bush team.
That would have been a mistake. Unless your business is insanely profitable, you would've gained nothing from McCain
My business is not insanely profitable (though it is profitable) and you are incorrect. I stand to benefit considerably in the short term from Obama's policies - I'll get a tax cut and my health care will be cheaper, but I'm not convinced that it will be better, as I'm leery of government stepping in to the health care arena even more than it already does. I believe that healthcare is a responsibility and not a right and my lowest point with respect to Obama came when he gave the all-to-easy 'health care is a right' answer during one of the debates. I pay $320/mo for moderate (not great) health insurance right now and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to that going down, but at what long-term cost? I don't want Canada's health care system, or the UK's, and I don't buy Obama's assertion that we can provide a single-payer national system while still keeping private insurance -- sooner or later the Dems are going to make it even more difficult to be a doctor in this country than they already have. My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
If Obama's tax plan passes then it will create a dis-incentive for me to perform beyond a certain point. Right now I deal exclusively with contractors. As a NYC-based business I already have very little incentive to grow a business with full-time employees -- and I'm originally from Delaware, where the opposite is true.
McCain's tax and health care plan made quite a lot of sense to me. I am always delighted to hear people who do not run businesses tell me what I would or would not have gained, though, but the reality is that you don't know until you run the numbers. Because I support just myself right now, I'm in the clear - but the last thing I want to do is to be running a small business that does gross over a million or so a year (gross, not net, and that's still 'small') because then I'm squarely in the crosshairs of the 'big business' that liberals love to hate and love to tax, regardless of how big a business I think I am.
'Just invest that surplus money into expanding the business' sounds a bit pithy and easy, like there's some magical button I press to keep my capital expenses up and my profits down. It's not always up to me.
Finally, I have read Obama's web site (and McCain's). I want to do the best that I can and I have no problem paying taxes - but I could've planned much more for what McCain planned to do than I can from what I know about Obama's initiatives. Both guys have a big problem telling us how they're going to pay for any of their plans, but I had confidence that McCain is going to be a, well, conservative spender, based on a clear record. Obama's simply unproven.
If I'd voted just in the interest of my small business then I would've voted McCain. But there's more to being an American than my bottom line, even if that's my only source of income. I'd consider myself a 'Republican Reptile' ala PJ O'Rourke - fiscally conservative (in the 'small government' sense) but socially liberal - and neither party has represented my views for so long as I've been eligible to vote. The McCain of 2000 was probably the closest I've seen.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not an ideologue - I really do respect both Obama and McCain and I think either one is fundamentally better for the US than Bush. I try to deal in day-to-day stuff that affects me while not losing sight of the shape the country and its finances are in. I saw just as much (if not more) anti-White racism during the campaign as I did anti-Black, and right now I'm looking through the congressional record to find the exact votes between 2002 and 2004 wher