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.'"

Duh.

I'm glad someone is finally stating the obvious.

Re:Duh.

Not only that, perhaps we can now realize that exercising free speech actually *does* have consequences and hence cannot be treated as an inert exercise of one's freedom.

Perhaps as a civilization this sort of thing may help us grow up and realize that the right of free speech comes with the duty to exercise it responsibly. More generally, all rights come with a corresponding duty.

The question is, however, do we as a people have the collective intelligence and insight to pick up the socio-political subtleties of this sort of thing?

Re:Duh.

First, in my experience only MSNBC has a liberal bias. Second, so? Obama was hitting themes that struck a chord with Americans. People want healthcare, and responsible end to the war in Iraq, etc. McCain/Palin, on the other hand, basically accused him of being a terrorist. If there's more positive going on with Obama, there will be more positive stories. That's not bias, that's just basic common sense. What I thought was stupid were the ridiculous "false equivalence" stories where they'd critize both candidates for "going negative" when Obama was talking about the fact that McCain would tax healthcare (ie, telling the truth) and McCain was accusing him of palling around with terrorists (ie, a lie).

The 2008 post-election drinking game

1) Go to Daily Kos or a similar site and retrieve a vanity post from 2004 whining about Bush stealing the election
2) Replace Bush with Obama, and post to FreeRepublic
3) Drink a shot everytime someone replies positively
4) Die of alcohol poisoning

Irony laden fun for the whole family.

Not really biased

I don't see this as evidence of bias on the part of reporters, I see it at evidence of the Democratic Primary running as long as it did.

Also, the Republican campaign(s) threw a lot of mud which of course prompted coverage. If Mccain hadn't put Obama in the news so much, he wouldn't have been in the new so much. If the accusations had more merit the resulting coverage wouldn't have been as positive as it was.

Insightful

I'd say you've pretty much nailed it with that comment. A lot of the coverage of Obama was prompted by attacks that he was "pallin' around with terrorists" and whatnot. The press investigated, found that the concerns were baseless, and the result was what ammounts to a positive story for Obama. Then, of course, McCain keeps up the attacks and the press writes what ammounts to a negative story about how McCain is slinging mud on the campaign trail. It's not really that the press was biased (though I will give you that the media does tend to have a leftist tilt), so much as that they covered what was happening on the election trail. How was anyone supposed to spin the facts as a positive story for McCain? Obama, on the other hand, didn't give the press much chance to cover McCain. His attacks were far fewer, and according to most fact checkers nearly every one of them had merit.

Re:Insightful

In other words there were more positive stories on Obama because there was more positive stuff to say about him.

Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully tallies with him winning too ;-)

Justin.
A Brit.

I wouldn't know

I ditched the TV 20 years ago, and the newspaper 5 years ago. I don't understand why anyone listens to the "main stream media" anymore. My in-laws think everything they see on TV "news" is Gospel, however.

The goal of the media isnt to report

The goal of the media to sell advertising and papers. They do this by 'sexing' up the news as much as possible to make people want to read it. If it bleeds, it leads as they say. Why read boring stories about real substance when you can read Exciting! Stories! About Stars!

So its no surprise Obama had more favorabe coverage. He was by far the 'sexier' candidate.

(Tho Palin was hotter)

Palin?

Do the numbers factor in Sarah Palin at all? I'm too lazy to sign up for the Post.

She was in the news quite a bit, at least a HECK of a lot more than Biden. I'm not saying her press was "good" but there was a lot of it.

Comparing Obama+Biden vs McCain+Palin probably results in closer numbers.

Besides, are we really surprised? Obama running as the Democrat nominee was history in the making. Of course he would get more press.

Overseas coverage

I can't speak for other countries, but that was certainly the case here in Australia - Obama was being discussed as if he were already president, and McCain was rarely mentioned (the Americans being interviewed had to keep reminding the Australian reporters that McCain even existed). Perhaps it has something to do with the excitement of the possibility of the first black president, or perhaps the political alignment of Australia made us favour Obama, who knows?

Favouring...

Bush had a good run in the media especially in making "the case" in the war against Iraq. He got a nice handshake from the mainstream media then, but when the shoe is on the other foot it's like the end of the world. Besides, the Republicans got so unpopular after two Bush terms it would be hard enough ramming the same trash down people's throats again.

To quote Colbert...

..."Reality has a strong liberal bias."

My take on this is that Obama's candidacy and success were in fact more newsworthy than McCain's. Obama changed the game in a lot of ways, both in terms of who he is and how he ran. McCain was more of a known quantity to begin with, and ran a fairly ordinary race. In fact, the most remarkable thing about McCain's campaign (apart from the stunt-casting VP pick, which generated plenty of news)was that it was so painfully typical, where McCain used to do things more his own way.

In short, if McCain had made more news, he might have gotten more headlines. Instead, he was mostly yesterday's news.

Horrors!! Being positive causes positive coverage

I agree with Bill Maher. Not every story has two sides. We don't expect every negative story about axe murderers to be balanced by a positive story about axe murderers.

Why, then, are we expecting that the bizarre campaign of a man who is a shadow of who he was running with an uninformed hatemonger and which wants to continue

• the massive shift of economic benefits to the super-rich,
• corrupt government with the further invasion of government-sponsored religion into our personal lives,
• and cowboy diplomacy

would get as much positive press as a smooth campaign by two qualified candidates running on a platform of

• equitable economic policy,
• ethical government that leaves people free to make their own religious choices
• the return of the USA to the community of nations

Sometimes the reason the story is positive is because the subject is positive.

When someone doesn't say anything...

If you have watched the campaigns of both McCain and Obama, there is also a clear difference in what has been said on both sides. It was even more clear for the month leading up to the election.

The Obama campaign has spent the most time saying what Barack Obama felt were the solutions to the problems, and talking about the problems out there. There was very little McCain/Palin bashing from the campaign. It may have been the press coverage, but I didn't see the Obama camp really stirring up anti-McCain feelings with fairly few advertisements saying why people should not vote for McCain.

On the other hand, EVERY rally that McCain and Palin were at showed no solutions, just reasons why they said not to vote for Obama. This shows why McCain lost, because he didn't show he was focused on why people should vote for him.

So, in the press, why should they cover, "Republican candidate bashes Obama but says nothing about how to deal with the issues" day in and day out? If McCain was more presidential BEFORE his concession speech, he would have done better.

Also, when a candidate ONLY focuses on his/her "base", it makes anyone not in that group feel that there is no reason to support that person. If people in the press have a normal bias toward a more moderate to liberal candidate, then those who are focused on ONLY targeting the conservative people, it just makes for there being no real news if that conservative candidate doesn't say anything new.

Did McCain EVER talk about having real solutions, or just how people should be afraid of having Obama as president?

Re:No surprise

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.

Re:No surprise

Compare the CNN to the CBC in Canada and you'd swear Canada is a quasi-Socialist country!

The CNN only 'appears' to be left-biased because the rest of the media is actually right-biased. In my eye, the CNN is quite centrist.

I don't think there really is a media outlet with a left-bias in the US... But I'm speaking as a Canadian with only a passing interest in American politics.

Re:No surprise

Why was this marked Troll? I find it a very valid statement.

Because it was loaded down with hyperbole and violated Godwin's law?

It's in the article.

The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views.

That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".

That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.

Re:It's in the article.

The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views.

That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".

That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.

Add to that - the ones people wanted to read

That's possible.

But the reactions here (on Slashdot) to articles about the candidates various technological positions did seem to do fairly well from a "number of comments" point of view.

I'd say that this is more a matter of the same phenomena that we see in every election now. The "pundits" talk about whatever is easiest for them to talk about. And they're words get coverage because it's easier for the "reporters" to just regurgitate whatever they've heard.

So, rather than research a subject and ask INFORMED questions of the candidates THEMSELVES we get the topic de jour from the pundits, then echoed by the reporters, then echoed by other reporters and then echoed by other pundits. Since all of the pundits and reporters are talking about it, it MUST be an important issue, right?

I think that is why we saw so many websites pop up this election that did independent fact-checking of the candidates' public statements.

Re:No surprise

Meh.

You often hear hard-right folks complaining about liberal media bias. And I also often hear hard-left folks whining about the media's conservative bias.

Here's the reality: the media is fairly centrist, vaguely center-left. Obama isn't a hard-left liberal. He's pretty much center-left. Most voters are vaguely center-right, with a significant center-left contingent. The folks that complain the loudest are usually either hard-left, hard-right or some minority political position.

Re:No surprise

I voted McCain; I was (and am) a fan of the pork-barrel spending cuts he wanted to implement

So what are you going to do to solve the other 98% of the Federal budget deficit after you get rid of earmarks? And what's pork? Most Americans would view stuff that their own Congressman brings home as "economic development" and stuff that the other 434 bring home as "pork". Might it just be that some earmarks actually serve a valid purpose and that purpose is lost somewhere in all the discussion about the abuse and excess?

Do not try to bring up "fair".

I think the point of this story is that Obama won because the press favored him. Personally, I feel that the election was close enough that it could have gone the other way had the media been fair.

Here's a personal account of an election worker in Iowa dealing with voter "purges":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/precinct_elections_official/ [theregister.co.uk]

Do not start talking about "fair" without also addressing those purges.

And from TFA:

The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786.

So you're talking about a difference of 160 stories. Over almost a year. Let's just call it a year. That means we're talking about a difference of less than 1 story every two days.

Meanwhile, McCain's 786 stories equates to just over 2 stories every day for a year.

Compared to Obama's 946 which equates to ... just over 2 stories every day for a year.

But every THIRD day, Obama would get THREE stories and McCain would only get TWO stories.

Yeah, and you're going to complain about the press "favored" Obama?

That's the cardinal problem with these surveys

Sure, you can survey the number of times this candidate was mentioned in a positive or negative light and give an `objective' metric to compare to other candidates. The problem is that such a methodology ignores whether or not a candidate deserves those positive or negative mentions. To take extreme cases, consider either Alaska's Ted Stevens or Louisiana's William Jefferson. One would claim that if media coverage of these two men wasn't disproportionately negative that this would show bias. Sometimes a candidate is deserving of being attacked (or lauded) more frequently than his or her opponent.