Study Shows Media MUCH Tougher On Obama
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, McCain, Media
Of course many are crying about the “liberal-media” bias favoring Obama, but it looks like that’s not the case.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign. [...]During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.
Now, is Obama getting more media coverage? Yes, as the Tyndall Report showed on Friday, and I don’t think there’s really any doubt about that. But that’s because McCain wrapped up his nomination 3 months before Obama did. So my guess is that Hillary Clinton has received more media coverage than McCain too.
In any event, this isn’t a liberal bias thing as much as it’s a focus on primary season and, after Obama won, the minutiae of his campaign since he’s seen as such a wild card by the media. And, when the Tyndall Report looked at who the media focuses on over the past 20 years, it’s a wash.
Jan-Jun (mins) Democrat/Republican
1988 – Dukakis/Bush – 53/167
1992 – Clinton/Bush – 158/94
1996 – Clinton/Dole – 37/130
2000 – Gore/Bush – 71/111
2004 – Kerry/Bush – 157/133
2008 – Obama/McCain – 389/203
The totals? 865 minutes for the Dems and 838 minutes for the Repubs. And if Obama had wrapped up the nomination in February like McCain did, I’m sure they’d be at near parity in terms of coverage.
Also, as the numbers from 1996 show, getting a lot more media coverage is not necessarily a good thing. Dole had nearly 4 times the amount that Clinton did, and Clinton mopped the floor with him in November.
In any event, please don’t buy into the spin that the press is in love with Obama when the exact opposite seems to be the case. Sure, he’ll occasionally get great coverage like he did this last week, but ultimately I think both candidates get a pretty even shake when you really look at the coverage. And that is as it should be.
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July 27th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Part of it is conservative bias, but part of it is that McCain’s attacks — no matter how unfounded — make for good ratings. After all, today’s corporate press feeds on drama and controversy, whether real or not. And speaking of fake drama, the media also profits by presenting this race as a close one, i.e., cultivating the illusion that McCain actually stands a chance. In other words, the interests of the media converge with those of the campaign industry, which stands to make a small fortune on contributions to McCain — and that’s even after subtracting the millions they’ll spend on advertising on the media’s TV stations and Web sites.
July 28th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Look at those numbers. Unless the contest features an INCUMBENT already in the White House, the candidate getting the most coverage wins.
The only exception is Dole vs. Clinton’s second term, and 2nd Term Bush v. Kerry.
If the trend holds, it’s President Hope-Change-Believe come next JAN.
Spell my name right, is that it? No such thing as bad publicity?
July 28th, 2008 at 9:10 am
In any event, please don’t buy into the spin that the press is in love with Obama when the exact opposite seems to be the case.<
Better go check the past releases from the same source before making that claim, rather than depending on cherry-picking out-of-context editorialism from the L.A. Times. Feliz is on the right beam–unless the coverage is immensely negative (not slightly negative, but “Obama eats babies and tortures kittens” negative) then it’s ALL good. Just spell my name right. The key line from the story is simple:
Obama got 166 minutes of coverage in the seven weeks after the end of the primary season, compared with 67 minutes for McCain.
Five to two is five to two. The media is giving Obama more than twice as much “free advertising” than they are giving McCain.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Oh, and an additional caveat. NEVER accept such a second-hand story uncritically when the source material purportedly being described is unavailable for examination. Without the source study to examine, you’re simply taking Rainey’s description as gospel. You know, completely on faith. It’s an unusual claim, so one would actually like to see what it’s based on, because details count.
Tracking the political donations of the media shows that the Obama/McCain “donation ratio” in the primaries was roughly 20-to-1.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I’m utterly with Tully here. The only reason that unsupportable claims such as these ever see the light of day is because they give permission to folks who want to ignore the obvious that its ok to ignore the obvious. Most Obama supporters will simply say “they did a study that showed otherwise” and that’ll be the end of it. But any knucklehead can cook a study when the judgement is so subjective.
For example, Consider a study that awarded the same score to the following negative statements:
-Questions have been raised about Candidate A’s understanding of economic issues.
-Candidate B has a close long-term relationship with the Grand whatever of the Ku Klux Klan.
It gets awfully subjective awfully fast. Like Tully says, 5 to 2 is 5 to 2. That can be counted, quantified, and relied on in some substantive form. One thing you strongly predict from that 5 to 2 ratio is that among those who don’t pay very close attention to politics, they are much more likely to know who the dem nom is than the GOP nom.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:14 am
My point was it’s all very muddy, and given how many question marks surround Obama, it makes a lot of sense that he’d get more coverage and when that coverage deviates from being neutral, it’s more often negative. This, to me, follows what I’ve seen throughout the campaign, not “the press is in the bag for Obama” coverage that the right wing claims.
And yes, I’m taking Rainey’s explanation as the truth. If the opposite proves to be true, then I’ll adjust the post accordingly and question his integrity from that point forward. But Tully…did he simply make up those percentages?
July 28th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Justin, without the actual source material all you have is Rainey’s characterization of the study. You have no idea what they’re calling negative, what show they sourced it to, how they’re counting “hits,” etc. IOW, since it’s a subjective interpretive measure, you need the raw data in order to be able to objectively assess it.
EX: A thirty-second series of 3 or 4-second man-in-the-street sound bites taken outside of a Klan meeting used by NBC to show racism affecting the election might be counted as 7-8 negative media mentions of Obama. Hey, they were aired on NBC, they were all distinctly negative about Obama! But such a story would itself NOT be negative, but fairly blatant supportive pro-Obama propaganda.
Point being, YOU DON’T KNOW. You’re taking Rainey’s characterization and interpretation purely on faith–yet Rainey has been a fairly consistent Obama booster, or at least consistently anti-everyone BUT Obama, one of those who can himself be tarred with the “biased media for Obama” label. He has a vested interest in repudiating that perception, and so can hardly be considered an impartial source.
Indeed, just on general principle when considering claims of media bias one can go directly to things such as the Tyndall Report, where the measurement is pretty straight-up. 5 to 2. Or to that 20-to-1 Obama/McCain journalist’s donation ratio, which is likewise an objective measure requiring no subjective interpretation at all. They are what they are. No parsing of mening, no subjective assessment, just a clear objective measure. How many minutes? How much money? How many donors? No shading required.
When you see something wildly at variance with the objective measures, you need to take a VERY close look at that source material. CMPA has not publicly released it that I can find.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
ROTFL. I love it when someone throws a bucket of mud into the waters and then says, “oh, it’s all very muddy.”
It’s as muddy as you wanna make it. Show me someone who is genuinely interested in collecting and tabulating the amount and nature of the coverage each candidate is getting to determine whether there is any bias. Then I might be persuaded. Show me someone who explains “here’s how I did it.”
Instead, what we have is info from folks eager to refute the notion that one candidate is getting most of the coverage and that this candidate is vastly preferred by the media.
Tully thinks I’m a starry-eyed uncritical adorer of Obama. [Admit it Tully, you do! :-) ] Yet I’m having little trouble noticing that Obama is getting a LOT of coverage, and that a lot of it is fairly uncritical. MAYBE the random samples I get from channel surfing are not wholly representative because of whatever I choose to watch. That’s possible. But there is just NO WAY that Obama is getting treated more harshly, unless one is only counting FOX.
Frankly, such a contention strains my credulity to the breaking point. For someone who purports to be moderate and reasonable Justin, you need to do a better job than to simply leap to report uncritically on such a study simply because it’s good for your team. This study is not worthy of trumpeting or calling folks attention to, it’s worthy of dismissal. Or perhaps derision. If one can’t report one’s methodology on something so utterly subjective, that’s a HUGE red flag. Hopefully sooner or later you’ll get this.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Actually, I think the mainstream media coverage of Obama is fairly well reflected on Donklephant. Justin (& I don’t think he’d disagree) isn’t just an Obama cool-aid drinker, he literally showers himself in Obama cool-aid like a superbowl gatorade splash on the headcoach. If I had the time, or the inclination, I’d LOVE to do a statistical analysis of Donklephant posts on positive/negative McCain/Obama posts. I suspect it would be 95% Obama positive/10 McCain Positive, 5% Obama negative/95% negative. Now, mw & Carl gallantly try to spooning water out of the Titantic – but the fact is (& I mean this as no insult to Justin – he has every right to his political views) – the site should really be renamed to Obamaphile or Donklobama. Even good coverage of McCain comes with some dour caveat about something aspect of the man or his campaign. I don’t blame Obamaphile’s for being excited, he is probably going to be the next President — but straining credulity is something you should probably get use to Kranky.