MEDIA BIAS Examined
Many amongst us have perceived the media as being biased. Below material confirms the impression:
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Journalism.Org (PEW Institute)How Different Media Have Covered the General Election
>>>> When it comes to coverage of the campaign for president 2008, where one goes for news makes a difference, according to a new study.
In cable, the evidence firmly suggests there now really is an ideological divide between two of the three channels, at least in their coverage of the campaign.Things look much better for Barack Obama—and much worse for John McCain—on MSNBC than in most other news outlets. On the Fox News Channel, the coverage of the presidential candidates is something of a mirror image of that seen on MSNBC.>>>>
>>>>Among the findings:
These findings augment what was learned from a broader report on campaign media coverage released a week earlier entitled “Winning the Media Campaign: How the Press Reported the 2008 General Election.” That study found that in the media overall—a sample of 43 outlets studied in the six weeks following the conventions through the last debate—Barack Obama’s coverage was somewhat more positive than negative (36% vs. 29%),
while John McCain’s, in contrast, was substantially negative (57% vs. 14% positive).
The report concluded that this, in significant part, reflected and magnified the horse race and direction of the polls.
Sept. 2008: By 5-to-1 Public Thinks Most Journalists Trying to Elect Obama
Rasmussen: By 10-to-1 Public Says Reporters 'Trying to Hurt Palin'
Pew Finds Media Credibility Plummets to All-Time Lows
Rasmussen: '55% Say Media Bias Bigger Problem than Campaign Cash'
Fox News Poll: Two-Thirds Think Most Journalists Want Obama to Win
Rasmussen: Three Times More See Pro-Obama Over Pro-McCain Bias
Pew: Many Recognize Media's Pro-Obama Bias, Democrats Prefer CNN
Plus:Rasmussen: 63%+ of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and MSNBC Viewers Back Obama
More Polls on How the Public Views the News Media
Polls Documenting Liberal Beliefs of Journalists
Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
>>>>>Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal>>>>>>
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a new Rasmussen Reports survey showed nearly 60 percent of voters say Mr. Obama gets better treatment from journalists. Nearly half of voters - 49 percent - said reporters would help Mr. Obama, compared with 14 percent who said Mr. McCain benefited from friendly coverage.
The Rasmussen survey suggested the perceived trend is intensifying, with those seeing a pro-Obama slant jumping 5 percentage points from last month while views regarding Mr. McCain stayed the same
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Media Research Center
The Trashing of Sarah Palin
>>>>>Gregory was wrong — that precise question was posed repeatedly on ABC, CBS and NBC as the networks invaded every nook and cranny of Palin's family life. From August 29 through September 4, the Big Three network morning and evening shows ran a total of 59 stories mentioning Palin's family, or about eight per day. Nearly two-thirds of those (37) brought up the pregnancy of Palin's teenaged daughter; another ten questioned whether she could balance her family obligations with a campaign — the exact suggestion Gregory claimed was never "brought up by the media."
On Wednesday's Today, NBC's Amy Robach wondered of Palin: "Will she be shortchanging her kids, or will she be shortchanging the country?" During a roundtable discussion on CBS, the Washington Post's Sally Quinn scolded that "a woman with five children, including one with special needs, and a daughter who is a 17-year-old child who is pregnant and about to have a baby, probably has got to rethink her priorities. >>>>>>
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Obama’s Margin of Victory: The Media
How Barack Obama Could Not Have Won the Democratic Nomination Without ABC, CBS and NBC
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It was the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point — 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast — separating Barack Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June. Obama’s margin among elected delegates was almost as thin, just 51 to 48 percent.
But Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks.
At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign.
These are the key findings of the Media Research Center’s exhaustive analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of Barack Obama — every story, every soundbite, every mention — from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries in June 2008, a total of 1,365 stories. MRC analysts found that the networks’ coverage — particularly prior to the formal start of Obama’s presidential campaign — bordered on giddy celebration of a political "rock star" rather than objective newsgathering.
If the media did not actually win the Democratic nomination for Barack Obama, they surely made it a whole lot easier.
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Editing Reverend Wright’s Wrongs
How the Networks Censored and Manipulated Jeremiah Wright Soundbites and Glorified Barack Obama’s Race Speech
Barack Obama’s greatest struggle in the drawn-out Democratic primary campaign was his relationship with his long-time minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Rev. Wright’s noxious recorded sermons suggesting that America deserved 9/11 and that the federal government created AIDS as a tool of black genocide were widely viewed on YouTube and discussed on talk radio and cable TV.
But what about the network news shows, the programs most watched by the least politically involved viewers? TV pundits suggested the virulent video clips unfairly caricatured the minister (and by association, Obama himself.) PBS star Bill Moyers lamented that Wright was "assassinated by soundbites."
Did the nation’s broadcast networks really play Wright’s remarks to excess? A Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS, and NBC news broadcasts from the formal announcement of the Obama campaign on February 10, 2007 through July 15 reveals that a viewer watching only broadcast TV news would have received a much more limited (and even censored) version of Wright’s sermons.
Key findings:
The broadcast networks took an entire year to locate Reverend Wright. Despite a feisty interview on Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes back on March 1, 2007 about Obama’s church’s controversial commitment to a "black value system," the name of Jeremiah Wright didn’t surface on the Big Three networks until CBS first broached it on February 28, 2008. The first story with Wright sermon soundbites aired two weeks later, on ABC on March 13. By then, 42 states and the District of Columbia had already voted.
The broadcast network evening news shows gave virtually no coverage to Wright soundbites in March. Snippets of Wright’s sermons drew only 72 seconds of evening news coverage in all of March, or an average of 24 seconds per network, less than one commercial.
The Big Three morning shows gave four times as much time to Wright soundbites as the evening shows in March. The morning shows carried almost five minutes of Wright clips (297 seconds), with ABC offering the most at 128 seconds. The other two networks each ran less than 90 seconds.
The networks completely ignored soundbites of Wright’s conspiracy theory about the U.S. government inventing AIDS to kill blacks, and mostly ignored his comments about the September 11 terrorist attacks being "America’s chickens coming home to roost."
None of the network morning or evening shows found one opportunity to air Wright’s 2003 sermon accusing the federal government of hiding the truth about their "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color."
His attack on America’s alleged record of terrorism and violence was ignored by all three evening shows, as well as by CBS’s The Early Show.
The broadcast networks gave clips of Obama’s "race speech" on March 18 more than twice as much air time in a few hours than they gave all of the Wright bites aired in the month of March. The evening news shows on March 18 carried almost six minutes (348 seconds) of highlights from the Obama speech, or roughly five times more than all the Wright bites in March. The morning shows carried roughly nine and a half minutes (572 seconds) of sound from the speech. The three morning shows gave almost twice as much time to the Obama speech clips as they devoted to Wright soundbites in March.
Combined, Obama’s one speech drew about 15 minutes of clips, while Wright’s years of sermons drew about six minutes.
Broadcast network interview segments on the Wright remarks and Obama’s race speech in March were dominated by liberal guests. When the networks allowed Republican or conservative guests, they stayed neutral or praised Obama’s remarks. Overall, the network pundit count was 16 to 5.
CBS especially loaded its reaction panels with nine liberals and just one right-leaning pundit, pollster Frank Luntz, who contained his remarks to grading Obama’s stagecraft.
NBC allowed six liberals and three conservatives.
ABC aired one liberal and one conservative.
Wright’s National Press Club vitriol repeating his opinions about an AIDS conspiracy and America deserving 9/11 went virtually unreported.
The broadcast network morning and evening shows aired only two and a half minutes (155 seconds) of soundbites from Wright’s April 28 performance at the National Press Club, but there were no soundbites about AIDS and only 23 seconds about America deserving a terrorist attack.
By contrast, these same Big Three shows aired almost six minutes (358 seconds) of clips of Wright’s softball interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, where he accused conservatives of smearing him as a hater.
In today’s rapid-fire political atmosphere of cable news, talk radio, and the Internet, media analysts can easily make the mistake of believing that the leading network news outlets were tough on a candidate because of the general perception of how the entire media – Old Media and New Media – brought a controversy to the public’s attention.
But voters who sampled only a light menu of news from Big Three network TV could easily have missed the depths of Reverend Wright’s outrageous remarks. No one could find in these stories a scouring scrutiny of Obama’s decades of membership in his controversial church.
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Proof for their liberal bias - see them in their own words:
Obviously Not the Media’s Choice
Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift: "This [McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin] is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across news-"Host John McLaughlin: "Where is that? See that?"Clift: "In very, very many newsrooms."— Exchange on The McLaughlin Group, August 31.
"It’s hard to know how many women will flock to the GOP ticket because of Palin. She is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over George W. Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the teaching of creationism in public schools. Women are not likely to be impressed by her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape and incest."—
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in a "Web exclusive" posted on his magazine’s Web site, August 29.
Are You Even More Unbeatable?
"What do you think of Senator McCain’s vice presidential choice?...Does the fact that he chose as his Vice President someone who has less experience than you take that weapon out of his arsenal?"—
CBS’s Steve Kroft to Obama on 60 Minutes, August 31.
Obama "Looks Like John Adams"
"[McCain has] done it [picked Sarah Palin] at great cost, because the whole Republican convention...was going to be the slogan, ‘He’s not ready to lead,’ meaning Barack Obama. Well, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like John Adams. I mean, it’s just, it’s no contest."—
Newsweek’s Howard Fineman on MSNBC’s Countdown, August 29.
What’s the GOP’s Nastiest Smear?
"What of the attacks has busted through to you? What makes you angriest at John McCain, the Republicans? What’s being said about your husband that you want to shout from the mountain tops is not true?"—
NBC’s Brian Williams to Michelle Obama in a taped interview shown on the August 27 Nightly News.
"Many of the attacks that have come from John McCain’s campaign have been, quite frankly, condescending. Are you surprised by that? Does it anger you?"— CBS’s Harry Smith to Democratic candidate Barack Obama on The Early Show, August 22.
Impressing His Biggest Fans
"I’m just not so sure I’ve ever witnessed anything like this in all of the politics that I’ve covered, which goes back quite a few years already. This place rumbled. And there were certain points during the speech when the stadium was just so alive, and the ground was almost quaking."—
CBS’s Harry Smith on The Early Show, August 29, the morning after Barack Obama’s convention address.
"In many ways it was less a speech than a symphony.
It moved quickly, it had high tempo, at times inspiring, then it became more intimate, slower, all along sort of interweaving a main theme about America’s promise, echoes of Lincoln, of King, even of Reagan and of Kennedy....It was a masterpiece."—
CNN analyst David Gergen during live coverage following Obama’s convention speech, August 28.
Keith Olbermann: "For 42 minutes, not a sour note
and spellbinding throughout in a way usually reserved for the creations of fiction. An extraordinary political statement. Almost a fully realized, tough, crisp, insistent speech in tone and in the sense of cutting through the clutter....I’d love to find something to criticize about it. You got anything?" Chris Matthews: "No. You know I’ve been criticized for saying he inspires me, and to hell with my critics!...You know in the Bible they talk about Jesus serving the good wine last, I think the Democrats did the same."—
MSNBC live convention coverage, August 28.
"[Obama] had to do two things. He had to be tough and he had to be detailed. We know he is eloquent. He can’t write an ineloquent check, this man."—
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham on PBS’s Charlie Rose following Obama’s speech, August 28.
George’s Impartial Analysis
George Stephanopoulos: "A night of perfect political choreography. The only problem Barack Obama has right now, and it’s a high-class problem, as Bill Clinton used to say, is can he top what happened tonight?"Host Terry Moran: "An extraordinary series of speeches [by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden]."—
ABC’s Nightline on August 27.
"I think every night in this convention has built on the one that came before....The speeches have gotten better every night."—
Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, August 28.
An Inspiring "Night for the Ages"
"An incredible night: A return and a roar from the lion of the Democrats....You can almost still feel and hear the echo of the roar that went up last night when Senator Edward Kennedy returned to the convention....People were overwhelmed, simply overwhelmed. They knew it was a night to remember for all ages."—
ABC’s Diane Sawyer on the first night of the Democratic convention, August 26 Good Morning America.
Co-host Maggie Rodriguez: "I think all of us on this shift stayed up a little bit later than we should, watching what I think couldn’t have been a more compelling first night of that convention."Co-host Julie Chen: "Yeah, Michelle Obama, so impressive, so, just inspiring to watch her speak."—
CBS’s The Early Show, August 26.
Antsy for More Attacks on GOP
"There is one big missing piece tonight, I think, which is why the American people should throw the bums out. We haven’t heard one word about that. We have the most unpopular President in American history, and he’s barely been mentioned tonight. I just think that is an extraordinary gap."—
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin after the conclusion of the first night of the Democratic convention, August 25.
"You can say Barack Obama really needs something from Hillary Clinton. He needs her to wake up this hall after a speech that was not only not red meat by former Governor [Mark] Warner, but more like tofu with sprouts."—
CBS’s Jeff Greenfield during live coverage, August 26.
"I am waiting for someone to take the podium and say the word ‘torture.’ I’m waiting for someone to take the podium, say the word ‘Iraq.’ I’m waiting for someone to take, to take the podium and talk about domestic surveillance and to talk about all the reasons that Democrats want to get rid of George Bush."— Washington Post columnist and MSNBC on-air regular Eugene Robinson during live coverage, August 26.
Co-anchor Chris Matthews: "Keith, I am amazed why they don’t have more fun with the man who calls himself Dick Cheney. Why [not] more references? Why no, why don’t they talk about these villains, as they see them? Why don’t they talk about Bush, who they see as a villain."Co-anchor Keith Olbermann: "I know it works for me."—
SNBC live convention coverage, August 26.
Brian vs. the Glass Ceiling
"I assume she’s going to talk about that glass ceiling, i.e., a woman President of these United States, which begs the question as we listen to her tonight, if not her, who? And when?"—
Brian Williams previewing Hillary Clinton’s convention speech with NBC’s Chuck Todd, August 26 Nightly News.
Obama = "a Fiscal Conservative"
"Obama’s aides optimistically insist he will reduce it [the deficit], thanks to his tax increases on the affluent and his plan to wind down the Iraq war. Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative."—
Staff writer David Leonhardt in an August 24 New York Times Magazine article on Obama’s economic ideas.
Harry Hails "Legendary" Liberal
"Helen Thomas has been covering the White House for-ever, almost 50 years now. We’re going to talk to Rory Kennedy, director of a new documentary about the legendary journalist....Where she sits and what she does day after day after day, I’m not sure we value enough."—
CBS’s Harry Smith on The Early Show, August 14.
Admiring a "Profound" Attack
"What I liked about the performance by Barack Obama was this: He finally took on John McCain on the issue of our time, which is Russia, of course, and its invasion of Georgia. And he used the word ‘bluster’ twice. Now, there are a lot of neo-conservatives out there that just love the old black and white Manichaean Cold War feeling again. They’d like to get rid of color television, in fact. Let’s go back to the ‘50s and let’s fight with the Russians again....Here’s a guy, Barack Obama who’s not supposed to have a strong suit, in the area of foreign policy, calling it what it is: bluster. It’s just words, just sword-rattling, and he called it today. I thought that was profound."—
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews anchoring live coverage of Barack Obama’s introduction of Joe Biden as his running mate, August 23.
"Tired of Being Called a Traitor"
"The Republican Party is corrupt through and through.... They’re too adept at thievery, at moving the Constitution into places it never meant to go. I think that they have an extraordinary ability to divide rather than unite. And I think that I am tired of being called a traitor because I like my flag and I like and I support the troops."—
Actor Richard Dreyfuss on MSNBC News Live, August 27.
Mocking Obama’s Media Groupies
"I think there is a problem, though, with the media gushing over him [Barack Obama] too much. I don’t think he thinks that he’s all that, but the media does. I mean, the coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him."—
HBO’s Bill Maher on Real Time, August 29.
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Most of all:
God Bless America
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