Press Favored Obama Throughout Campaign 1601
narcberry writes "After complaints of one-sided reporting, the Washington Post checked their own articles and agreed. Obama was clearly favored, throughout his campaign, in terms of more favorable articles, less criticism, better page real-estate, more pictures, and total disregard for problems such as his drug use. 'Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics. The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama's battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that. McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.'"
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Informative)
The media (with the exception of Fox News) has always had a pretty large liberal bias.
Really? To the rest of the world (or at least western Europe), even 'left wing' American newspapers appear hilariously conservative.
Overseas coverage (Score:5, Informative)
I can't speak for other countries, but that was certainly the case here in Australia - Obama was being discussed as if he were already president, and McCain was rarely mentioned (the Americans being interviewed had to keep reminding the Australian reporters that McCain even existed). Perhaps it has something to do with the excitement of the possibility of the first black president, or perhaps the political alignment of Australia made us favour Obama, who knows?
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Why was this marked Troll? I find it a very valid statement.
Because it was loaded down with hyperbole and violated Godwin's law?
Re:That's nothing (Score:4, Informative)
Of course you mean candidate, Unlike Obama, McCain kept his promise to stay within the public finance system which was a lot lower then Obama's fund raising.
Maybe He Deserved It? (Score:3, Informative)
Hell, even McCain made it a point to focus everything on Obama, forcing the media to give the big O even more press coverage. Every time Obama talked about his plan, his policy, or whatnot, McCain just came back with talking about how Obama's plan was wrong, with little focus on his own plans. Hell, the only time McCain was ever in the news for something he did was some idiotic Palin shit or a gaffe. When both candidates are so focused on the actions of one of them (Palin's issues notwithstanding), of course the press is going to favor one over the other. In addition, when one candidate makes his platform consist of basically nothing but attacks on the other, I think that helps out the press coverage as well.
Re:yah (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, funny how the bipartisan investigation found her guilty, then suddenly before the election a hand picked partisan panel cleared her of all charges. Gee, I wonder why nobody took that seriously.
Re:World Domination (Score:5, Informative)
Then it dawned on me. Thanks to satellite TV, now the whole world can watch US TV news.
Satellite makes it easier, but it's been a basically like this for way longer than that, and teh reasons run much deeper:
The point is that as the only superpower (or until recently one of two and everyone's ally unless you were already run by the soviets), what America does _matters_. Directly. To just about everyone. So if you know what's good for you, you better get wise about what it's doing.
Also, most countries are smaller and not spoilt with this kind of power themselves, they know that most of what "is happening" takes place outside your country, so even regular folks takes a certain interest in international affairs even beyond the superpowers, wheras in the US you don't really need to care much about what happens out side it, and are even encouraged to think that all that 'foreign stuff' is mainly irrelevant compared to what goes on in the US.
I'm European, but have lived in the US for a short while, and visited several times since, and I must say the dearth of international news (beyond whatever wars you guys are involved in at any given time) is simply shocking. The rest of us simply cannot afford to be that ignorant.
Re:Insightful (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure the press investigated? The reporting was more along the lines of how Palin's comments were stirring up the hate speech against Obama. I'm willing to bet that if McCain had been hanging out with someone who was an unrepentant abortion bomber, the story would have been handled much differently in the press.
A good example of this was Ayers coming out after the election and saying he was involved with the Obama campaign "until the maelstrom hit". Did the reporter follow up on this interesting tidbit of news? How does this reconcile with Obama's statements regarding Ayers? I guess we'll never know?
Re:World Domination (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and one more thing:
"Then I tried to think of cases in recent decades where world opinion differed significantly from the US media's dominant spin. I can't think of a single one."
Umm, there was this tiny little thing called Iraq, where basically noone agreed with you, or believed your claims of evidence. That might not be the impression you got from your domestic media, though.
International opinion was also much quicker to oppose the Vietnam war than the domestic majority.
We all laughed our asses off at how it is possible to let a president's fling almost overthrow the country.
I think you might find also find that international opinion on your christian right and neocons is far less accepting than in the US.
Drug use?! (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and when asked about his drug use back in October 2006 said "Of course I inhaled. That was the point" [blogspot.com]. On video [politics.com].
No, I have no idea why the media would not want to spend reporting resources and column inches covering this repeatedly.
And would you agree that Obama has been far more open about his illegal substance abuse than certain other presidents [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Insightful (Score:1, Informative)
I'd say you've pretty much nailed it with that comment. A lot of the coverage of Obama was prompted by attacks that he was "pallin' around with terrorists" and whatnot. The press investigated, found that the concerns were baseless, and the result was what ammounts to a positive story for Obama.
I don't care who you are, that right there is funny!
The press investigated? The post says themselves that they didn't dig into Obama enough. Didn't research his undergrad years, his Harvard years, his past drug use. I read a lot of news and not even on Fox did I see anyone asking why Obama refused to release transcripts, co-workers names, where he lived, and with who, while at Columbia. Where did he get the money to pay for tuition? The press simply fell in love with a great "underdog" "first black president" "rags to riches" story and ran with that to the almost exclusion of anything that would even pass for actual reporting. Anyone who thinks they "know" Obama just from reading the papers is sadly deluding themselves.
Personally I hope the man does well. He has a lot of expectations to live up to, and I hope for our sake, he is able to do so. But please don't kid yourself into thinking that the press gave both sides a fair shake in their coverage. We know more about Palan's daughter's sex life then we know about Obama and his past.
Re:yah (Score:1, Informative)
If you read the report issued by both investigations, you would find that both of the clearly state that the firings were lawful and Palin was within her rights as governor. One of them then goes on to say that she violated the state ethics law because she personally benefited (without any monetary consideration) from the firings because of the divorce between the one trooper and her sister. But that investigation was never chartered or commisioned with the ability to investigate that, it was outside their scope.
Now, if you can look past your campaign newspeak and mudslinging, answer to me this, how can the firing be legal and the governor within her rights, and still be a violation of the state ethics laws for the very same actions? Ok, Tod Paling using the government resources to track down other troopers who were willing to rat on the one divorcing his sister (in law?) might have been an abuse but the governor taking action that was found to be legal and within her right can't be. This is why the report didn't assign any punishment recommendations.
I suggest you read the reports before answering if you haven't already. It will be painfully obvious if you haven't.
Re:I wouldn't know (Score:4, Informative)
On the internet, you can go off on a tangent and investigate questions you have. On the TV/Radio, you don't have that many chances to branch your train of thought and must accept what they are saying as if it has basis, then possibly read about it in the paper the next morning to validate/debunk their claims.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Informative)
There, fixed that for ya. America has a population of ~305,621,847. 57,434,084 (which is 46% of the popular, not 48%, by the way) voted for McCain. 57,434,084 / 305,621,847 = 18.8%. Aside from the 21.4% who voted Obama, we can't really know what the other ~60% of the American population thinks. And if you want to adjust the numbers based on the voting age population only, check this link here [ucsb.edu].
MOD AC PARENT UP (Score:3, Informative)
The press is not free because the current government allows it, but because representative government requires it. Without free speech and the free press, there are no other freedoms.
This line alone trumps all the BS in the GP.
Re:Insightful (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, it's been investigated [google.com]. You may not have heard much beyond "it's baseless", because when someone throws a baseless attack that doesn't stick, there's not much more for the press to say.
Would you please cite this? Because the quote I heard after election day was "I barely knew Obama" [huffingtonpost.com].
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
Ha ha not a bad idea. Obviously Im conservative, but I cant stand Fox, and they're my last choice for a news outlet. I read CNN mostly because its a good page layout, and provide links to more in-depth coverage thats less biased (Time/Money/SI Swimsuits/etc).
If you want unbiased though you need to go to BBC I think. I cant look at the BBC RSS feed without thinking either US news is incompetent or purposely burying world news. Either excuse is disturbing.
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Informative)
I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.
The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.
Why are you so angry? It's not bogus, nor is it bullshit. You simply have to understand the context where it's valid.
The statement is used when Reality on the ground does not match the Reality in the rhetoric of the far Right (in America, that is). They have this skewed view of Reality and then when Reality does not match up to their views it's a Liberal plot, conveniently ignored or they sing as a rallying cry - "the Media has a Liberal Bias!" conveniently ignoring the reported facts.
Certainly, taken at face value the phrase is untrue. Reality does not have a bias at all. But when someone says "reality has a liberal bias" they are in fact pointing out that the idiots on the extreme wing actually have a bias that is not consonant with Reality. It points out the inflexible nature of this type of mindset; in effect I'm not wrong, Reality is! It's also turning around the phrase the far Right has been using and making it less effective.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
She did ask for clarification.
"In what respect, Charlie?"
I think this one's a bit of a stretch, since the phrase isn't well-defined anyway. The interviewer should have defined the term for the audience if not Palin straight away, but he didn't, because it was a trap.
The Supreme Court one, on the other hand, is a train wreck.
Re:Duh. (Score:2, Informative)
You realize that Obama had more ads because he BOUGHT more ads, not because of any network bias right?
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the above link is about all the big lies on BOTH sides. Which still makes the point that BOTH sides produced some pretty uncontested (by the press) deceptions. This was a vicious campaign, and to imply that one side didn't participate in the BS-slinging (although the McCain campaign, IMO, was worse about it) is pretty absurd.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
Not only were they unlikely to run a positive story on McCain, but if they did then all other stories on the main page would be negative. If the biz section had a downbeat story on the economy, then the political section would have a McCain story. If the Science section told of some breakthrough, they would run an Obama story in National or Politics.
I worked for CNN.com about 7 years ago. I don't know if it's still this way, but the placement of stories was not done by any political partisans back then -- it was done by story rank. With as many stories as CNN runs and has in their database, all pages were generated from a template that would iterate through and put in the top "n" stories based on the template definition. The top science story or business story appearing on the same page as the top political story and having the tone be positive or negative would be purely coincidental.
Then again, this was several years ago, but I have no reason to believe it would have changed since then.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
It was a big deal with a ton of press coverage when Clinton ran. There is a definite difference in how Obama was handled. I'm not sure of the reason why, but the press had a general tendency to like Obama better.
What people read in newspapers and see on TV is all they know about a candidate. The Fourth Estate can and does influence who is elected. It doesn't matter if you liked Obama or liked McCain, this should concern you. Maybe next time the press won't back your candidate.
Re:Duh. (Score:2, Informative)
The media is so full of Obama they fail to mention that Obama LOST among white voters 55% to 43%. This election was more about race and Obama worship by the media than anything else. 95% of Black voters voted for Obama. This 12% loss among the majority race in the United states I think would be news worthy.
McCain's side felt they needed to go negative to point out all the negative aspects of an Obama presidency. I don't remember anything negative pointed out about Obama by the main stream media.
Obama didn't need to go negative because there was constant negative stories about McCain/Palin. And there was constant belittling of McCain/Palin on the late night talk shows. For a political figure I have never seen anyone get a pass on the late night shows like Obama.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously Im conservative... ...If you want unbiased though you need to go to BBC I think.
I choked on my morning coffee on that one... the BBC?
Forward your quote to every conservative you know and ask if they would agree. I bet you get 0 hits.
American conservatives are still outraged for the BBC exposing Bush lies before and during the Iraq war.
Based on your comments, I'd say you're NOT thinking like a conservative (in the de facto sense).. even if that's how you vote all or most of the time.
Re:Duh. (Score:1, Informative)
While I agree with you, I think the point is that Obama is going to be leading a country where a lot of people are put away for a long time for doing the exact same thing as that, the only difference is that he didn't get caught. In fact, this isn't like traffic violations, which we've all done. There is an ill-defined War on Drugs going on, and has been for a long time. In that respect, the government has put it aside from other offenses as somehow special. I love Obama, but why should he support putting kids in jail for something he tried and didn't cause harm to him?
To me, that's the problem. He's now leading a country that is running two 'real' wars, and one war on drugs, and he used drugs. Why should that be?
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there was not. There was a Nazi party here, but even most of the German-Americans didn't really appreciate it because they didn't like the new Germany as it was not the same country they originally had left. The Nazi party here only got into a few thousand members at it's height, and they were in constant watch of the FBI (we even deported one of it's first leaders). I'd hardly call that support.
Then perhaps you should actually learn something about it?
Most of the powerful interests in America were avid supporters of the Fascists. Including Hearst, Ford and even our own Dear Leader's grandfather Prescott Bush.
Fascism is right wing extremism, hence elitist and good for only the wealthy and powerful. That is what the political right *is* after all.
Most Americans were Liberals at the time (back when that word was still used for what it actually means) and so were isolationist and didn't want to get involved. The American Left, back when we had one to speak of, were the ones agitating to fight Hitler, while the wealthy and powerful wanted to either stay out and profit off of the war or to join up on the side of the Fascists.
The Nazi party membership in America at the time is meaningless.
Re:Duh. (Score:2, Informative)
I think YOU need to go look up anarchism. Seriously. I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, I've studied anarchism for twenty years. You seem to have some serious misconceptions about it, I suggest you actually read something written by an anarchist, any anarchist. Anarchism does not mean 'no government.' It means, no RULER. That is to say, no government by force. If everyone agrees to socialist of communist practices, it is still anarchism.
Strict property rights anarchists are the ones who love to impose their ideas about property on those who don't own property. Adam Smith himself wrote, in Wealth of Nations, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." So you see, insofar as individualist anarchism seeks to protect the property of the haves from the have-nots, it is inherently oppressive. The fellow who coined the term 'anarchist', Pierre Proudhon, claimed that "Property is Theft!"
Please try to get educated on a subject before commenting on it and proving yourself to be an ignorant loudmouth. You obviously completely misunderstand anarchism: you know nothing of its history and roots, its many branches and philosophies, or it's current directions and activities. And you have the gall to tell me to look it up!
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Hollywood, (did I leave any out?) all through McCain in front of the bus months before the election.
Bull. You know who threw McCain in front of the bus this year? He did, by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, by being nominated at the Xcel Center in St. Paul while there were high school kids and old women getting tear gassed outside, and by simply being a Republican presidential candidate at a really bad time to be a Republican presidential candidate.
Hell I saw a ratio of 4-1 Obama ads to McCain ads on TV. Even on FOX.
That's because the Obama campaign raised way more money. You may wish to ask yourself "How is that the Democrats managed to raise more money than the bigoted old white guy party?" You may come up with some surprising answers.
The media won this election for Obama. They didn't report on it. They choose a side and promoted it. So much for reporting the news. They were making the news.
The Democrats were using words like "hope" and "change," while the Republicans were using words like "terrorist" and "anti-American." And you are shocked - SHOCKED - that one of those messages got more air time than the other?
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that the bias of the US press has been documented for quite a long time as being to the left and in favor of the US Democrat party. The press splits along media types with most major papers being of the left as are most TV outlets while talk radio tends towards the right. This spans across any political clan or personal force like Berlusconi. It's a persistent distortion of the world and it's a bad outcome for US politics.
Re:Duh. (Score:1, Informative)
White privilege? What? Government gives out more money percentage wise to minorities than to white people. Freedoms apply to all, and now Obama will be increasing Government and restricting those freedoms for all.
Obama was running to steal money from those that have worked hard and earned it to give handouts to those that have not earned it.
95% of Blacks voted along racial lines. That sounds pretty racist to me.
How many presidents have lost the white vote by 12%? Just wait until all those black voters don't get their free houses and free gas and everything Obama promised everyone. I have never seen a candidate promise so much to so many. I suspect enthusiasm will not be as high in 4 years, when all he promised will have been just that with nothing more.
As for McCain he was despised among republicans, and only won the nomination of the party due to non Republicans voting in the Republican primary. I am happy to forget McCain even though he was the lesser of 2 evils.
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Duh. (Score:2, Informative)
And..... Kerry lost.
Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities voting overwhelmingly for a socialist that has promised them more handouts just seems like they might have just been voting for the candidate that will give the most handouts instead of the one with more experience. I know that is true of many of the Minorities I talked to.
The real loser in this election was the American values of work, and self reliance. They has been replace with Punishing those who succeed to give to those that don't work, can't manage their money, and want Government to fix all their problems.
If you would like to know what Obama plans to do just listen to what he has said, and then you can go read the exact same stuff in the communist manifesto. Obama is a marxist despite what you may hear just look at what he does. 4 years should be enough for anyone with a truly open mind to figure this out.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't mean to imply that people only liked Obama because they may feel unnecessarily guilty, but if they do feel "white Guilt" then liking Obama is like a two for one sale.
I think Obama's race helped him with more people than it hurt him. That's not saying he wasn't an attractive candidate before considering race. I'm just saying that their are more "White" people that feel guilty for the perceived sins of previous generations than their are white people who want to keep minorities down. (I say perceived sins because I'm white, but like most of the families I know, my family emigrated to the US long after slavery had been abolished).
If the economy hadn't tanked so close to the election the results would probably have been much closer based on the polling prior to Wall Streets implosion. I think that is what pushed Obama over the top in a big way, but to say that NO ONE let race influence their vote is just willful ignorance.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit".
The guy published his freaking birth certificate, what more do you want? If the media covers every half-baked nut-job conspiracy theory, there wouldn't be any time left to find out which drunken celebrity was caught exposing genitalia last weekend. And you do realize that the same question was raised and subsequently not covered for McCain too, right?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp [snopes.com]
http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/citizen.asp [snopes.com]
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
"Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit". "
Your point is somewhat valid. The concept of "standing" is important to keep the courts from being overwhelmed by frivolous lawsuits. The question is, who does have standing in this case, and why did they not file a lawsuit?
My guess is a Secretary of State for an individual state (or whomever is the head of elections) or an Attorney General could probably claim standing on behalf of the state's residents. So could Congress, or probably the Solicitor General or US Attorney General (both of the latter reporting to a Republican President). There are certainly plenty of officials from red states where Obama one that might be motivated to do so.
My guess is they are not filing suit for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is they know it is a farce and that they would be proved wrong, then highly embarrassed.
Also note, despite the "privacy" of the original vault copy, there are plenty of people who could access it (legally or illegally). I am sure the CIA, FBI, etc. have plenty of resources that could dig in, and have, but found it was legit.
If you read the lawsuit the Hilary supporter in PA filed, it was a bunch of conspiracy theory crap. No proof whatsoever, just a bunch of accusations. Are you telling me that some official in Kenya could not be bribed to pony up a birth certificate if it existed? But, no such certificate has emerged.
Obama responded with a birth certificate, yet no official in Hawaii has disputed it, and I am sure there are plenty of honest people there that would if it were bogus.
Bottom line, this was brought up by the media, but dropped mostly because it was a bogus claim.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Informative)
Could it be that Obama got more positive press coverage because he did fewer stupid things? Like not putting a hold on his campaign to phone Washington about assisting some kind of quick fix to the debt crisis? Like not getting window candy to be his VP? Like trying to bury his medical report/book by releasing it late on the Friday before a long weekend?
While I agree some of the media were pro-Obama, and some were pro-McCain, and Obama has also done some gaff's during the campaign, it really seemed like McCain/Palin just couldn't stop with the gaff's and "dumb" negative campaigning (like putting forth that Obama is pals with a terrorist).