Could they be any more in the tank for Obama?
Considering how much noise Democrats have made about reviving the Fairness Doctrine to reign in conservative talk radio you would think that what used to be called the “mainstream” “news” media would be extra careful to fairly present the views of both candidates as we approach the fall election for President of the United States.
On Monday, we learned that the NY Times had refused to print an op-ed submitted by John McCain after publishing an op-ed from Barack Obama on July 14th. The rejection of McCain’s submission was yet another in a growing list of examples of traditional “news” media showing bias and taking sides.
When we learned that the three anchors of evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC were going to accompany Obama on his overseas trip, something they have yet to do with President Bush, we began to discover just how deep the media’s love affair with Obama really was.
The Project for Journalism Excellence, as well as the Tyndall Report have documented the sheer volume of news stories that feature Obama.
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.
Newsweek Covers featuring Barack the Transcendant
Voter’s Catching On to “News” Media Favoritism
The Pew Poll for June 5, 2008 broke the not so surprising news that the public thought the “news” media favored Obama heavily throughout the primary campaign when his candidacy was something new. But as the Project for Excellence in Journalism demonstrates in the chart below, the media’s fascination with Obama hasn’t waned now that he is the presumptive Democrat nominee.
The latest Rasmussen Poll also finds that the public’s awareness of the bias in favor of Obama is growing:
Belief Growing That Reporters are Trying to Help Obama Win
Rasmussen
Monday, July 21, 2008The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the New York Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
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In a more general sense, 45% say that most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win. Just 30% disagree and 25% are not sure. Democrats are evenly divided as to whether a reporter would release such information while Republicans and unaffiliated voters have less confidence in the reporters.
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A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.
So not only are voters clued into the favorable bias for Obama, they have also figured out that the media have been reporting that both the economy and the Iraq war are worse than they actually are (which tends to help Obama).
Unfortunately, as the Pew June 5 survey shows, even though readers and viewers of traditional media are declining, they still dominate the vast majority of news coverage that reaches most Americans.
However, with declining viewership and readership of the old media comes an opportunity for voters to get a better sampling of information from new media on the internet. And that’s why we’re here. It may not be equal time, but is sure is better than no time at all!
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