Today I came across yet another study quantifying the man-crush the media has on Barack Obama. (Thanks to the L.A. Times for bringing it to my attention. It's an admirable self-indictment as it's as liberal an institution as any of the major cities' newspapers.)
The study was done by the Pew Research Center. They're legit. Rupert Murdoch doesn't own them or anything. The article found that news media coverage of Obama has been about a third positive, a third negative, and a third neutral or mixed. McCain's received coverage that has been about half negative, 20% positive, and the rest neutral or mixed.
The media's crush on Obama is well-documented and has been the substance of some of SNL's best routines of the current campaign. Though I'm typically among the first in line to indict the media generally for having a leftist slant, the article reminds us that McCain's current pattern of coverage is parallel to Gore's in 2000.
It's a good study, and it puts out there an interesting question to which it makes no pretense at having the answer: is the particular media coverage a cause or an effect of public opinion? Theoretically, it could go either way. I'm curious as to your thoughts out there.
I did want to post this, though, because it again could be seen of evidence of the power of the way events are portrayed over our perceptions of it. I've referenced that phenomenon more in relationship to how the recession's been incorrectly labeled in the name of fear, but certainly those who didn't decide months ago whom they would vote for would do well to take a step back from the hype one way or the other and find a means that they're comfortable with to get information on the candidates.
Though I'm more of a party man is cache to admit, I've gotten a lot of information from Project Vote Smart and The League of Women Voters. They do a pretty good job of just providing information, which I like.
P.S. Are you kidding me?
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3 comments:
Ha ha! It's so refreshing to find an educated voter out there! The ingnorant voter population scare me because I think they do rely too much on the media who is so liberal, it's rediculous. I just hope they watched the debates...McCain smashed him. "Man crush"...that's so funny. It's funny because it's true. Even while Obama was on his heels the entire debate, I must say he was very quick and articulate as he danced around the issues that he was confronted with. Sigh...this next election really scares me. If I wanted to live in socialist Russia, I would move there...we all know how well Russia's turned out... Sorry, I just wanted to rant.
First off, I very strongly feel that unless you truly had a blank slate before turning on the debates, the only effect they had on you was to amplify your prior disposition. There may be some prediposed people out there that have experience watching/critiquing debates, or oratories in general, but in my view they are the only predisposed people objective enough to judge a winner of a debate. Others are simply too subjective and emotional about it (we are after all talking about judging an performance of emotion).
Regarding the "media" being leftist, such a statement and discussion must begin with an acceptable definition of "media." Mid/small town/"red state" news orgs? Financial news orgs? Blogs? Talk radio? Wall Street Journal? Chicago Tribune? All of these fall under "media" to me, and are right-leaning. CNN, MSNBC, LA Times, NY Times, blogs, public radio also fall under "media" and are left-leaning. Fox News, in my humble opinion, is an reality entertainment channel, and s not part of the "media" (although if they were, they alone would skew the average "media" bias to the right, in my opinion).
I really think the issue begins and ends with the definition of "media". It's one of those self-fulfilling, stigmatized words that become more powerful the less understood they are. If "media" is defined in such a way as to circumscribe a set of social entities that for other reasons are left-leaning, then the statement that "the media is left-leaning" is a misleading, manipulative tautology that serves right-wing marketing. The problem is, the meaning of the term "media", like the term "intellectual", and many others, has been appropriated by conservatives and laden with excessive stigma. This is propagated by complicit right-wing entities that under traditional definitions, belong to those categories, but actively renounce those labels to support their mutated meaning. It's also propagated by left-leaners whose resistance to the stigmatizations attached to the words is entirely passive.
I am truly curious of the underlying feelings that lead to the idea that the media (whatever that is) is left-leaning. If the underlying feelings are simply that there are statistics (such as those in the Times article) to reinforce this notion, then I coincidentally point you to Al Franken's Liars book from 5 or so years ago. He too references studies by Pew and other commonly-accepted impartial sources. If the evidence is merely empirical, it's not fair to so lightly credit the Times for it's own self-vilification. I recall during the 2000 election that conservatives felt that the negative Gore stories were simply a direct reflection of him doing negative things. Perhaps that's the case now with McCain.
My take on it is that the media, or at least the news media, is a free market business like any other. So either people don't want bias and any perceived bias by some is just an illusion, or conservatives consume much less news media than liberals. I'm being somewhat facetious, but the point remains.
Thanks for the post!
Article today from Politco.com entitled, "Why McCain is Getting Hosed by the Press" is pertinent:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14982.html
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