About the media’s love for Obama
July 30, 2008 Leave a comment
Not so much, it turns out. Sure, Obama's been getting a lot more coverage than McCain, but that is just news values dictating coverage, not any bias for Obama. Obama is simply a better news story– he is a Black man with a great chance at being the next president and for many voters he is the most inspiring political candidate in a generation. Furthermore, speeches to 200,000 in Berlin are inherently more newsworthy than town halls in New Hampshire. So, sure Obama's been getting more coverage, but as it turns out, the tone of that coverage is not actually in Obama's favor. From the LA Times:
aimed — with particular venom — at three broadcast networks.
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.
To be fair, it is not exactly Fox news here, as most of the reporting was neutral.
positive or negative, Lichter said. The study found, on average, less
than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three
networks combined — not exactly embracing or pummeling Obama or
McCain. But when a point of view did emerge, it tended to tilt against
Obama.
Still, certainly seems that any media love for Obama is surely outweighed by their love for McCain.