Study: Coverage of McCain Far More Negative than Obama
A Pew study published Wednesday proves what most of us said for weeks: the elite media – New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and so on – are highly biased this year.
According to the study, coverage of Senator John McCain was two to three times more negative than coverage of Sen. Barack Obama.
Of all the 2,412 stories on John McCain that appeared in newspapers and cable news channels between the Republican convention and the last Presidential debate, 57% were decidedly negative in tone, while only 14% was positive. The remainder (29%) was fairly neutral.
At the same time, coverage of Obama was positive 36% of the time (2.5 times more positive than the coverage of McCain), 35% was neutral, and only 29% were negative.
These are insane stats. They prove that which we already knew: the media have been in the tank for Obama and have gone after McCain on an unprecedented scale. Never before has coverage of one specific candidate been so decidedly negative as that of McCain.
What is interesting is that some friends who support Obama told me ‘no, the bias isn’t there, they could write far more negative about McCain than they currently do.’ Sadly, that reasoning isn’t exactly bulletproof. If they ignored 20% negative information about McCain, they ignored 80% negative info about Obama. Other than most Obama supporters, most liberals know that the media are in the tank for them and welcome it.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich agrees. He talked to Fox’s Greta von Susteren yesterday; he used most of the time available to criticize the ’elite media’ and to tell them what he thought of them.
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This is a powerful story and should be required reading for “both sides” Intriguing to see the unprecedented amount of positive Obama coverage early in the campaign. Also interesting to read about the “echo effect” (big chunk of positive coverage comes after an initial “neutral” story then public reaction). Here for me is the most telling part of the story:
“In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted.”
Is that not also true of their Senatorial careers (Or maybe better ”John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has spoken”)
durrr maybe its because McCain is running a campaign based in negativity while Barack Obama is talking about solving problems.