U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush

[MisterMike]

Study Shows U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=2&u=/nm/media_report_dc

...The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.


Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism...

 

[ginshun]

I can't believe that anybody is really surprised by this.

 

[Ray]

It's okay by me, he still won.

Even though we think that journalists, teachers and certain other professions are (or should be) unbiased we're all human and have opinions and biases (biasi?) that are difficult to conceal.

 

[rutherford]

Even though we think that journalists, teachers and certain other professions are (or should be) unbiased we're all human and have opinions and biases (biasi?) that are difficult to conceal.

Is it really biased to write a negative story, if it's all true?

If one writes a negative story, should one immediately write a positive story to seem balanced and unbiased?

I'm not sure you've come to a valid conclusion from the limited data given, and from the two brief sections quoted, I'd say the only bias I see is the misleading "Election Coverage Harder on Bush".

The full story is little better, and seems to try to cover too many things with far too few details.

 

[Ray]

Is it really biased to write a negative story, if it's all true?

If one writes a negative story, should one immediately write a positive story to seem balanced and unbiased?

I'm not sure you've come to a valid conclusion from the limited data given, and from the two brief sections quoted, I'd say the only bias I see is the misleading "Election Coverage Harder on Bush".

The full story is little better, and seems to try to cover too many things with far too few details.

Good thoughts.
Of course, if someone writes a negative story, they shouldn't immediately write a positive story. I guess I was going off on a tanget thinking about the rhetoric that I hear "the press is liberal and unfair" versus "the press is conservative and unfair."

 

[Andrew Green]

Umm... the logic just doesn't follow...

Following the same reasoning Charles Manson should be objecting that Mother Theresa got all the good press and was biased against him.

The only thing that suprised me was that Bush Won...

 

[Ray]

The only thing that suprised me was that Bush Won...

As you can imagine, it took a lot of hard work to help Bush get re-elected.

Do you know how many hours it took me to vote that many times at all those precincts?

{It's meant as a joke; I only voted once}

 

[PeachMonkey]

Do you know how many hours it took me to vote that many times at all those precincts?

{It's meant as a joke; I only voted once}

You're not kidding. You should've seen all the dead Democrats I registered in my district.

 

[Cryozombie]

I think, tho, perhaps the point being made was that... I dunno, say Bush did 100 Great things, 100 bad things, Kerry did 100 good things, 100 bad things...

More people focused on and wrote about Bushes 100 bad things than his 100 good things,

More people focused on and wrote about Kerrys 100 good things than his 100 bad things.

But I could have misread the point.

 

[PeachMonkey]

I think you did get the point of the article, Technopunk.

The think, however, that the article (and your analogy) missed that Kerry was not the incumbent president, and Bush was; Bush was far more likely, therefore, to have to defend himself against any problems, perceived or otherwise, including economic issues, broken promises, and the catastrophe in Iraq.

The article also pointed out that Fox News, the "unbiased" news station, gave Bush far more positive than negative reporting.

 

[Cryozombie]

Agreed.

 

[michaeledward]

Something doesn't smell right to me ...

I am going to go find and read that Columbia School of Journalism report.

 

[michaeledward]

I still haven't found the source report. But, I did find this. This is not news to me, but it certainly contributes to the 'stink' about pairing the words 'Bush Administration' with 'News'.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7183882/

On issues from Medicare to farm prices, hundreds of local stations are running stories extolling Bush administration policies, reaching tens of millions of people.

But all these reports were written and distributed by the administration and its public relations firms — not by journalists.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office warned that prepackaging news “for purposes of publicity or propaganda” has been banned since 1951, unless the reports are clearly labeled.

Often the videos are shown as is. But sometimes the reporters even re-record the government's scripts to make them sound more local.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Let me see if I understand the suggestion here. It's that AT LAST! we have solid, scientific evidence that the liberal press is biased against George Bush, and by implication against conservatives.

That's the point, eh?

Well, let's see. This is a self-study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, affiliated with Columbia University, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which draws heavily upon reporters and editors presently active in the media--in other words, the study's largely a product of a liberal university and the media alleged to be liberal. This proves that "the media," is biased, and unaware of that bias.

Did anybody else read far enough down in the article to notice that they also did a study of the War in Iraq's coverage, and concluded that despite claims, that coverage was fair and balanced?

I quite liked the point raised earlier: apparently, much of the, "bias," comes out of reporting the ideology, policies and mistakes of a President who's gotten us into an unnecessary war (no, I'm not talking about Afghanistan...remember Afghanistan? we have troops there?), run the deficit up towards a trillion dollars while cutting Federal programs for the needy & the elderly & veterans, and is now going after Social Security largely for ideological reasons. Oh, and is running an Administration that for the first time in our history has been officially getting into, "preventative detentions," and, "physical coercion," (i.e. torture) of citizens and others merely upon suspicion.

 

[rutherford]

Something doesn't smell right to me ...

I am going to go find and read that Columbia School of Journalism report.

I'm going to spend a few minutes with it myself.

This seems to be the report cited: http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/index.asp

Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institute affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The study is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and was produced with a number of partners, including Rick Edmonds, the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Michigan State University, the University of Alabama, and Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

 

[rutherford]

Well, the study actually doesn't say much more than Yahoo!'s news story - on this topic. Basically, they just present a percent of stories which had a particular tone. The methodology about how they selected media outlets and stories is interesting, but unrelated.

In fact this is pretty indicitive of the real thrusts of the paper:

What appears to be rising now is the charge of bias, largely a case of both sides of the political spectrum seeing the press as unfair to their views.

. . . [snip, snip] . . .

In other words, more of the public thought the press was unfair, but also thought the press had less undue influence on the outcome than four years earlier.

The question of bias also can be fragile and shift with events. In January of 2004, on the eve of the Democratic primaries, there was a rising sentiment that the press was biased in favor of Republicans.

By spring, when events in Iraq were becoming more negative, surveys suggested rising distrust among Republicans.

Yet over all there should be little solace here for the press. The long-term trends revealing declining credibility and believability have been established in scores of surveys from several different polling operations asking the questions in a variety of different ways. What's more, for the last two decades Americans' confidence in the press has lagged precipitously behind that of other institutions.

It may be that the expectations of the press have sunk enough that they will not sink much further. People are not dismayed by disappointments in the press. They expect them.

They go the other way and address the public perception and seem to have little interest in causation (why are the numbers skewed).

 

[Phoenix44]

Putting aside "liberal" vs "conservative," whatever that is, I think the most disturbing thing is that there is so little independent media. The media is now substantially corporate, and corporations will always act to increase their bottom line.

Most of the media in this country (print, radio, and TV) are owned by a few megacorporations: Time-Warner, Disney, Murdoch, ClearChannel...and even these corporations hook up at times, like Fox and Sinclair.

Media deregulation began under the Clinton Administration, and has really exploded under Bush. It is EXTREMELY frightening, because we cannot trust the news.

 

[michaeledward]

I hate to revive this thread ... but I also don't think this deserves its own thread ....


Why do you suppose the 'Media' gives the President a pass on stuff like this ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050531.html

THE PRESIDENT: I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation. In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, you know -- yes, sir.

This man has two college degrees. He has a wife that is a former librarian.

And, in this case, it can't be passed off as a slip of linguistic skills ... he actually took the time to define the word ... incorrectly.

For some reason, I would expect the Leader of the Free World to have command over his native language -- or at least enough sense to use vocabulary that is within his control.



disassemble -- definition 1) to come apart 2) scatter, disperse

dissemble -- definition 1) to hide under false pretenses 2) concele facts


This is just embarrassing.

 

[Ender]

Umm... the logic just doesn't follow...

Following the same reasoning Charles Manson should be objecting that Mother Theresa got all the good press and was biased against him.

The only thing that suprised me was that Bush Won...

just goes to show you the American public is still pretty smart..*G