Posted by
davecatbone on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 9:27:47 AM
Now? The media is discussing about how half of Americans (read partisan divide) "think" there is favorable media bias towards Barack Obama. All because Rasmussen released a poll pointing out the obvious. The New York Times doesn't help by refusing to publish McCain's viewpoints after doing so for Obama. Or the Networks sending their anchors along to act as press agents for Obama overseas.
Politico points out:
A Pew survey conducted from May 30-June 2 showed 37 percent of
Americans felt that Obama received preferential treatment from
reporters during the Democratic primary contests. Another Pew poll, conducted in late December 2007, showed 25 percent of
Americans believed that coverage of the 2008 election was biased toward
Democrats, compared to just 9 percent who saw a pro-Republican bias. In
2003, a similar question showed a more even split in responses: 22
percent of voters said the media tended to favor Democrats, but 17
percent saw bias in support of Republicans, suggesting that
conservative voters are especially concerned about media coverage in
2008.
See, it's
conservatives that have the problem, not the media. We shouldn't have any problem with opinion commentators anchoring news events. Like the
idiot twins Matthews and Olbermann on election coverage. Criticism of that is brushed off as being uninformed,
as reported at the NY Daily News:
A mildly exasperated NBC News team Monday dismissed complaints about overcovering Barack Obama's Middle East trip this week as a lot of "hot air" - and also declared that MSNBC viewers don't mind a bit if opinionated analysts like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann anchor straight news coverage.
David Gregory, NBC's chief White House
correspondent and host of "Race to the White House" on MSNBC,
said MSNBC's broader style reflects the "revolution" in the television
news business.
"We're trying to do something here," said Gregory. "We have a big
tent. We have many different views, all on one network (???). We're doing
reporting, analysis and opinion all under one umbrella."
Yes, yes....we know what you're trying to do there. But don't tell us you have "many views, all on one network". Vanity Fair published an article by Clintonite Dee Dee Myers, who reports:
The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which evaluates more than 300
newspaper, magazine, and television stories each week, found that from
June 9 (after Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination) until
July 13, Obama was more prominently covered every single week.
Of course, this Democrat can't quite say the truth. To Myers, the reasons for this are:
Obama is new and what’s new is “news.” As the first African-American to
run a serious race, let alone win a major party’s nomination, Obama is
running an historic campaign. Obama has created a “movement,” and
Americans are simply more interested in him than in his opponents (are we?).
Obama is running a smarter campaign (politically expedient?), and he knows how to court media
attention (not hard when they faint at his mention). It’s also true that intense media coverage is a double-
edged sword: the attention is great when things are going well, but it
can doom a candidate if and when things start to go badly (IF we hear about it). And so far,
Obama has had way more good days than bad days (thanks to what kind of coverage?).
So the problem seems to be, according to these people, that we
think there's media bias.