http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh122002.shtmlWE’VE GOT YOUR STUDY RIGHT HERE: Is the press corps
spilling with liberal bias? In Tuesday’s Post, Michael Kelly
presented a Lichter study of Campaign 2000 which seemed to
suggest that Bush and Gore got roughly similar press coverage.
(To Kelly, of course, data suggesting similar treatment were
evidence of continuing liberal bias. See THE DAILY HOWLER,
12/19/02.) To state the obvious, it’s almost impossible to
examine press coverage in the quantitative, “objective” way
Lichter attempts. But as we mentioned, the particular study
which Kelly cited covered network evening newscasts only, and
it included the one brief period of the twenty-month race when
Bush got worse coverage than Gore. One wider study of the
2000 coverage gives a quite different impression.
The study was released on July 28, 2000. “According to a study
by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Democrat Al Gore
was far more likely to be the subject of negative news stories
this year,” Judy Woodruff reported on Inside Politics. “Forty-two
percent of Gore stories covered the degree to which he is
tainted by scandal…When the media reported on Bush,” she
continued, “it was more likely to deal with positive themes. Forty
percent of all stories were on Bush’s main campaign message,
that he’s a different kind of Republican.”
The Daily Howler link is to Part 4 of an excellent series on "Why good guys slept".
Edited to add the actual link to the study:
http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/campaign2000/character/default.asp