More Crap from the NYT -- Apparently the Media Favors Obama

[Frank Booth]

Just hours after skewing their own poll results in order to further the false impression that Obama can't win white voters (see http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6505671), now the New York Times comes out with a story insinuating that the media is favoring Obama over McCain.

Here's some quotes from this "article," which is really nothing more than a shoddy opinion piece:

The extraordinary coverage planned for Mr. Obama’s trip, though in part solicited by aides, reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first black presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.

But the coverage also feeds into concerns in Mr. McCain’s campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

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 the three newscasts by the networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent roughly 114 minutes covering Mr. Obama since June. They spent about 48 minutes covering Mr. McCain, who made the rounds of the evening newscasts in satellite interviews last week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/politics/17anchors.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=media%20stars

Of course there's no mention in the article about how nearly all the media's coverage of Obama focuses on his former pastor, his supposed "flip-flopping," or his supposed "inability to win white voters." And there's no mention of how nearly all the media's coverage of McCain focuses on the supposed "fact that he's a straight-talkin' maverick war hero American patriot who's really not that senile."

It looks like once again the Republicans have already won the game of shaping the media's coverage. Of course it's hard to compete when the game's fixed.

[jobycom]

1. Reality is favoring Obama over McCain, but the media is doing it's best to battle that bias.

If Obama gets more positive coverage, it's only because it's very difficult to find anything positive to report about McCain or BushCo.

They are right that Obama was the darling of the media during the primaries, but that was so pre-Reverend Wright. They've veered to the right in time for the general election, as one would expect a corporate-owned entity whose tax breaks are at stake.

[Frank Booth]

2. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama gets more coverage than McCain, but there's no way

he gets more positive coverage. You almost never see a negative article about McCain, while poll results showing Obama with 8 point leads are captioned "Latest Poll Shows Troubling Trends for Obama."

As was posted somewhere earlier today, the media covered the Jesse Jackson "nuts" comment for days, while it completely ignored the McCain "Social Security is an absolute disgrace" comment.

[jobycom]

4. Yeah, but by the "objective" standards the media uses to calculate such things

they consider a "positive" story one that says something nice about a candidate or helps a candidate, and a "negative" story as one that criticizes a candidate. Truth is not an issue. So, for instance, if Obama were to wade into a flooding river and rescue a child, and McCain were caught beating his wife, and the media reported both of those stories factually, by their calculations they would be showing an Obama bias. They try to remove that bias by evening it out. "McCain was caught beating his wife today. Obama risked his life to save a small child today. McCain's economic plan drew praise from economists (small print shows one economist at a junior college in McCain's home town said this), while Obama is still dodging questions about possible Islamic roots."

That's what they do. They report facts, then report innuendo or irrelevancies to balance those facts, to appear "balanced" and "objective."

That's what they are doing with their "Troubling trends" angle on Obama. They have to find something negative to report, even if it's not true.

[EFerrari]

3. From the same people that refused to cover Ohio and who sat on

illegal wire tapping. They're credible.

[NattPang]

5. I just sent a letter to the editor in reference to this article.

Told them that Quality reporting is better than Quantity reporting,
and that my concerns with Barack Obama going overseas
followed by a plane full of reporters,
is my fear that they will try too hard to find
some kind of Faux Pas or gotcha to skew him with,
and that if they don't get what they want,
they'll just make it up.

[kevinmc]

6. the NYT's endorsed Hillary Clinton and McCain .... they are down to one choice. n/t

[depakid]

7. "They spent about 48 minutes covering Mr. McCain"

Which given the McCain campaign's repeated gaffes, is very fortunate for them.