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.'"
The constituency on the right stops painting the entire media as "commie liberul media with liberul bias" brush they'll get a bit better coverage.
Let's see your numbers on Palin douchebag submitter. She was dragged out of the backwaters to make more media interest and succeeded* at that.
Look at mee! I can pick and choose categories to make a weak non-statistically significant difference.
*if by 'succeeded' you don't distinquish between all media exposure and the folks simply pointing and laughing in print.
Well, is it their fault, really?
The media (with the exception of Fox News) has always had a pretty large liberal bias.
Really? To the rest of the world (or at least western Europe), even 'left wing' American newspapers appear hilariously conservative.
So? Much of the world supported either Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, Mussolini or Stalin. Does that mean they were right?
If the whole world jumped off a cliff... Oh, never mind.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
McCain picking a woefully under-qualified running mate, apparently without even bothering to vet her, is a big story. It has nothing to do with 'liberal bias'.
Not-Yet-Mass-Murderer-George-Pervert-Fucker-Bush
Is there some part of recent American history I've missed? Where does the mass murdering and pervert fucking come in?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
You mean with the false allegations of the trooper gates scandal that picked up just after she became the VP pick and ended with her being cleared of any lawbreaking just days before the election or that she took Joe the Plumber to campaign rallies after he dared questions Obama's big plan and had Ohio government employees dig up dirt in him in some attempt to destroy his creditability after the answer to his question became public.
Yes, there was many things for Palin to be in the news about.
Fox News "extreme"? I think you should take a look at the BBC before throwing those kinds of words around. Having grown up in the UK I can give an informed opinion (that's all, an opinion) that the BBC's leftist (not just liberal) bias makes FNC look positively middle of the road. The BBC's fawning, messiah-worshiping coverage of the Obama campaign has been sickening. If there were any network as sycophantically devoted to Bush or McCain (Fox has not been this despite assertions to the contrary) liberals would be puking up their granola. If I take your assertion as fact that Fox is conservatively biased then it is still losing 2-1 on the cable front (MSNBC and CNN both being left-leaning) or 5-1 taking the networks into account. Of course it still pounds both CNN and MSNBC (often combined) in the ratings.
Obama was new and had to be vetted, thus of course there were more articles about him. Of course, there was more positive coverage of him vs McCain as McCain's campaign often lied and distorted things about Obama.
Fair does not mean equal.
There's plenty of evidence that the 2004 Ohio election wasn't kosher. Like criminal convictions. Easy assertions of "both sides do it" awaits evidence that both sides, in fact, do it.
...amazing how this also coincides with Christian "moralists" recently taking over the Republican party.
Bush is what happens when your beloved theocrats run amok.
Although this notion that we once had this Leave-it-to-Beaver-esque
moral golden age and somehow lost it has about as much grounding in
actual reality than the TV shows that epitomize this "ideal".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Having said that, Obama is young, charismatic, and is promoting the change that 48% of Americans did not want.
There, fixed it for ya. America is a more divided country now than I can remember in my life time. Obama failed to unite the people and proven just how partisan he is.
Change We Need? Looked to me any other corrupt politician.
Bearded Dragon
Under-qualified? She was emminently qualified as she met the Constitutional requirements for the office. That is all that is necessary.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
I wouldn't call it obvious. I would call it the result of a McCain Campaign that tried to control the press (think Palin and Couric) and refused to even deal with the press when they asked tough questions. If you snub the press, expect to be snubbed back. McCain made his own bed; now he can sleep in it.
The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination.
Exactly. Why would they give McCain a prominent section just to cover whatever his new smear of the day is?
The whole "liberal media" thing is so bogus, here's a clue righties, give something positive to report and the media will report it. 8 years of GWB of course the news is going to appear biased when there's hardly anything positive to report.
Yeah but I guess the liberal media did go way too easy on Clinton, oh wait no they didn't it was a feeding frenzy. Selective memory I guess...
I consider it a blessing that America is NOT like Europe. For one thing, someone tried to steal my car this morning (yes I'm serious), but because I carry a gun, I was able to chase him off.* Had I been European, where guns are all but banned, my $25,000 car would be gone. That represents a loss of one whole year of my life (50 weeks at work).
Second, Europeans are taxed at 60% rate, which is outlandish. For comparison Americans are only taxed at 30%. Even at the pump Europeans are at a disadvantage with approximately 5 dollars tax levied on every gallon. Americans only pay 60-70 cents, just enough to provide 110% of the maintenance costs of highways (with the overage going towards subways/metros).
And finally, Americans don't have a government censoring their blogs, papers, or speech. Which is why the racist KKK is allowed to exist, but similar organizations in Europe are banned. Americans have freedom; Europeans believe they have freedom, but do not. The political leaders censor. (For example: In Northern France, the Britons in Brittany are forbidden from speaking their native Celtic language.)
*
* Founder of the Democratic Party Thomas Jefferson wrote: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind." - and - "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined or determined to commit crimes. Such laws only make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assassins." James Madison: "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms." (Federalist Paper #46)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Most voters are vaguely center-right, with a significant center-left contingent.
Most voters are actually center-left WRT their actual held positions, but believe they are center-right.
Something like 75% want the government to cover the health care costs for people who cannot afford care, for example. (And something like 52% of Republicans want that.)
Likewise, many Americans would like there to be less abortions, but do not want to make it illegal, yet paradoxically believe they are 'pro-life'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
This thread is now officially closed, and Chrisq has lost the argument.
You may return to your regular flame-throwing.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
The free market? The person with the most money gets to shout the loudest. Right wing talk radio is nothing but propaganda by the incredibly wealthy trying to convince the people to vote against their own interests. You don't need healthcare! You don't need labor laws! That's all the work of pesky liberals. You're either with us, or against us.
The funniest part is that the public airwaves are a limited resource. They are supposed to serve the public good, but oddly enough 95% of the spectrum is dedicated to commercial radio, which is either explicit (talk-radio) or implicit (commercial radio) propaganda. And this unbelievable powerful broadcast conduit, this window into nearly every American home, office, and vehicle, is available completely free for the big media companies, besides some nominal licensing fees.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
that his friendship with admitted left-wing terrorists is "a lie"??
Not only is it not a lie, it has been proven true.
Journalists have an obligation to report facts. The fact was that Palin said the things she said; the news media gave similar coverage to Biden's screw-ups. As for not reporting those negatives about Obama that you mention, the "news" you mention about Obama and Ayers was almost entirely hearsay, and the "news" about Obama's view of the coal industry was a statement taken completely out of context and warped in such a way that its meaning was very nearly the OPPOSITE of what he actually said. Neither of those represents factual information that should be reported as fact.
That said, if you'd prefer, in the future, journalists could run stories that say "[Republican candidate] lied today. In a statement before [group of people], he/she erroneously claimed that [Democrat candidate] said [blah], when in fact, he/she said [blah]." If you'd like that sort of negative press every time a candidate lies, then it would make sense for journalists to report such crap.... Without such obvious boilerplate stating that the statement is untrue (both before and after the statement in question), journalists would be reporting things as fact that are not fact, at which point there would be no point in having journalists at all; their entire purpose for existence is to filter through the lies and political reality-twisting, then distill that down until everything presented is factual.
Needless to say, I don't think this is what you want. What you want is for your candidates lies to be represented equally often as your opponents' factual statements. Sorry, but the purpose of journalism is to neither engage in nor support mudslinging. Just the facts.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh, go away. Political bias in US media, sure is, US Media executives, out and out Republicans, US journalists trend to democrat, US junk journalists don't give a rats and will just write or speak what ever lies they are told to.
To say US mass media was biased towards the demoocrats is a lie, the executives run the companies and journalists who don't keep silent are soon replaced by junk journalists (the good ones return as independents on the web).
The republicans were simply stuck with a couple of lame candidates forced upon them by the current administration (they desperately needed candidates as corrupt as them to ensure they stay out of jail) making positive storeys extraordinarily difficult. Now this would normally not present a problem for the Mass Media B$ machine, however the internet has crippled that machine and they are still desperately trying to come up with ways of stopping the internet from forcing the truth and from the public itself defining the public mind state, rather than mass media, selling the public mind state to the highest bidder.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Personally, if the press actually went "deeper" into Bill Ayers, etc., my opinion of them would be even lower than it is now, given how insubstantial many of the allegations were. And if they went "deep" into the tenuous connections between Obama and Ayers or Khalidi without going "deep" into their tenuous connections with McCain, that would be blatant bias ...
I'm not sure if I'm real.
Biden claims Americans were huddled around televisions watching the president during the Great Depression and nobody mocks him for it.
He's not mocked for it for a couple of reasons:
1) Frankly, most Americans wouldn't realize that he made a mistake until it was pointed out to them.
2) He is essentially correct, replace TV with Radio and the larger picture he was painting is correct.
3) Compared with the endless bumbling of Bush Junior, it certainly seems like a small mistake.
The difference is that Biden made a mistake on a minor detail in a story he was telling, while Palin, by her own admission, didn't know what the big picture was. That is a critical difference.
Fanatically anti-fanatical