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.'"
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad someone is finally stating the obvious.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, perhaps we can now realize that exercising free speech actually *does* have consequences and hence cannot be treated as an inert exercise of one's freedom.
Perhaps as a civilization this sort of thing may help us grow up and realize that the right of free speech comes with the duty to exercise it responsibly. More generally, all rights come with a corresponding duty.
The question is, however, do we as a people have the collective intelligence and insight to pick up the socio-political subtleties of this sort of thing?
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it comical anyone could deny bias occored, and when proven wrong its then justified by claiming Obama was more positive.
The point is being missed here: when the press is in the tank for a candidate and is not fair and balanced, everyone loses.
anyone claiming it didn't happen are shooting yourselves in the foot by justifying what happened with the press, because at the end of the day the press will turn on Obama, it always does to the standing president, and when they do its going to be comical watching everyone freak out at the "unfairness". i'll be the guy with the popcorn laughing...
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
and no I'm not making it up: 3 channels are owned by his son, while the public tv has given hope of being impartial and has been divided among major parties.
It's thousands times better to have genuine biased press (in both ways) than to have our illusion of freedom in speech.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone mod this guy insightful. "Unbiased" news cannot be gathered and disseminated by humans. Even the very choice of what to cover and what not to cover is highly biased.
It's better to have a variety of voices with their own, well-known slants than to have a single, "unbiased" voice with a hidden agenda. We need people on the left writing stories about racism and exploitive labor practices, and people on the right writing about gun laws and political correctness. And we all need delicious gummi bears. We need to stay up late, pounding handful after gooey handful into our mouths, until all of us, as a nation, have diabetes.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is that the major news media outlets assert the claim to "balanced and fair" news coverage, and add the veneer of being a 3rd party when covering political issues.
The truth is far different from this, and that is the real issue.
I don't object to something like "Worker's World Daily" or some other magazine that proudly proclaims its political bias. Or talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern. At least you know where those guys are coming from and have clearly stated agendas for what they are discussing.
CBS Evening News with Katie Coric pretends to be "balanced" in its coverage of events for each candidate, but did nearly nothing about the "breaking news" of Obama's suggestion to kill the American coal industry or his association with Bill Ayers. Yet they dove (and continue to dive into) the trivial issue of Sarah Palin's clothing... ignoring that Hillary Clinton spent even more on the clothing she wore during her campaign this past year (or had it donated by various famous designers).
If you are going to endorse a candidate... at least announce the fact and let your viewers/listeners/readers know about that fact before they get the news from you. The major news outlets don't do this, in spite of their rather blatant and obvious bias.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:5, Insightful)
I find it comical that you actually missed the point. Whenever something like this happens, it's a great time to ask why the press would be biased like this. There are news outlets with known liberal biases (MSNBC) and conservative biases (Fox), but for the most part, they all fall somewhere around the center and try to keep it there. We should then ask - what causes a respected news outlet like the post to run more articles for one candidate - I don't think it was a conscious decision, especially with the relatively small margins of difference between them.
I think GP hit it on the head. The newspapers will write articles that sell - one campaign's rhetoric was negative, and one was positive. In this campaign, positive was what sold. Why then, is it so surprising to hear that one news outlet featured him in more articles? It's not.
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we should let the free market provide "balance". If the Washington Post prints Obama-loving articles, than you counterbalance that with your own paper which prints McCain-loving articles. You then leave it to the People to decide, for themselves, where the truth lies. Not some authoritarian censor.
As for television, I've found all the outlets to be socialist biased (they assume only government can provide a solution). I have yet to find any television channels that espouses using the People, exercising their own freedom of choice, as a solution to problems (a bottom-up solution).
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not appropriate for news organizations. There is an inherent bias of some sort, but any quality news outlet works hard to eliminate it and disclose any potential conflicts of interest.
Having two extremist views on opposite sides does not constitute fair or balanced. It simply means that you've got two nutters that are arguing.
It's a lot like having nut jobs that argue for ID and agains evolution does not make it a controversy. It means that you've got nutters out there that don't want to learn new things.
No nation is well served when that sort of tit for tat news reporting is considered acceptable. And that's ultimately why Fox is such a crappy news source. It is indeed the worst offender, not that there aren't others, but the channel has historically lacked an appropriate wall between the editorials and the actual news. And there's a lack of fact checking and disinterest in eliminating stories that are clearly overtly biased.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
although by the standards of much of europe almost all american news stations are right wing.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
And by North Korea standards every news station in the world is extremely liberal. It's all about perspective. Why do people keep dragging out this rhetoric. This is American politics and American mainstream media. Everyone knows by now how right wing the politics are compared to Europe. Does that really mean anything?
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that in WW2 we were fighting against right wing ideology
Keep repeating that and keep showing your ignorance. Nazi's were socialists ...
Nationalsozialist
Yes, they called themselves that. Still, they weren't socialist, they were fascist. Same as in commercials, the labels aren't always correct. The Nazis weren't about class struggle (they were about struggle between peoples), and they didn't want to make all property public in the long term. And so on. Get Haffner's book on Hitler [wikipedia.org] for a readable introduction on what the Nazis wanted and didn't want. Some goals developed over the twelve years of their rule, other things they publicly demanded and still didn't do, it's not that simple.
You obviously don't know what a "right" or "left" wing is. The ultra right are .... anarchists. Ultra left are government solutions to every problem under the sun.
There are extremists of both wings that are very much into government and those that are against it.
The terms right and left are not well-defined.
The Democrat party of today has more in common with Nazis than the Republican party, though not by much.
Both parties have almost nothing in common with the Nazis, so that comparison just doesn't make any sense.
Reality is biased! (Re:Duh.) (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't an issue of "balance", the Obama visit was simply the bigger story.
And generally, Obama was a far bigger story than McCain. I mean, "My God, our next president may well be an elderly white man who married into money! Who'd have ever thought that such a thing could happen!" honestly doesn't make for such an interesting news discussion.
If journalists were discussing the potential significance of someone with Obama's background becoming president, it was difficult not to be positive. It was difficult to think of as much positive material relating to the idea of someone with McCain's background becoming president.
So Obama's campaign won a lot of positive news coverage by providing news stories that were difficult not to cover positively.
Where the situations were reversed was with the choice of VP. Biden was a hellishly boring VP candidate, and consequently didn't get much coverage. Old white guy with worthy credentials and a lot of tedious experience. Snore. Nothing to see, move along.
McCain OTOH deliberately chose an "exiting" VP candidate, and consequently got huge amounts of media coverage off the back of it.
Unfortunately for the McCain camp, there was a lot more to say about Palin that was potentially negative than potentially positive, and even a lot of republicans winced at the idea of "President Palin", because the person honestly didn't seem to know enough to be considered presidential material. And Palin seemed to love the attention - the McCain people couldn't complain that news people were putting undue emphasis on Palin, because that's why McCain chose Palin - to get headlines and try to stir up some excitement. But other than McCain himself, it was difficult to find anyone in the Republican Party with any experience who was prepared to stand in front of a camera and declare that they thought that Palin would actually be a competent President if anything should happen to McCain. So that then generated a further tendency for negative stories about the McCain campaign compared to the Obama campaign, and that in turn generated discussions about the relative judgement of the two candidates, since Obama was generally considered to have run an excellent campaign despite his relative inexperience, and since McCain seemed to have made at least one critical error, in his VP choice.
If that was the situation, then reporters were obliged to report on it. They weren't obliged to try to impose a corrective bias onto the news in order to force an artificial 50:50 balance in airtime, if the available stories and information didn't justify that balance.
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:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported. The new outlets only mentioned his negative stuff. Obama had *lots* of attacks on McCain but he was getting a lot more coverage so it didnt appear as if thats all he was saying.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also although I agree that Obama's message did strike a chord and McCain's messages were largely negative, in all fairness McCain had lots of positive messages but they were flatly refused to be reported.
If we're doing things in all fairness, then I should also point out that there's a difference between "McCain/Obama" ads and ads run by "McCain/Obama" supporters.
A lot of negative ads run against McCain/Obama were not directly from McCain/Obama but supporters of McCain/Obama.
Then, of course, we need to talk about money. When one side spends 3/4 to 1 on ads (Obama to McCain), it gives them a lot better ability to change their ratio of positive/negative advertising.
If, for example, McCain ran 10 negative ads and 10 positive ads and Obama runs 15 negative ads but 40 positive ads, Obama has actually run more negative ads but at a smaller ratio.
Hehe, maybe that's why the major media outlets loved him? He gave them a ton of money in advertisement.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a joke, that's quite accurate. Have you ever noticed the full page video game ads in the same publications that give those games a 9.6 or so? Major advertisers can exert a lot of influence.
McCain stayed within public financing limits. Obama exceeded them.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
See how long the secret union vote stays in effect. The union want that gone. If the secret vote is gone, the union leaders will know which people voted for and against what the union wants. Talk about peer pressure. Ever go to a union meeting? At the meeting may people are cheering on the union. then vote against what the union wants. Take away the secret voting, those same people may not vote against the union.
I know people in a few unions. This is what they are being told. Most of them are really scared. Not all of them have the skills to go to a new job or the funds to go out on their own right now.
Re:Duh. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Obama had *lots* of attacks on McCain "
You mean like how McCain was a Bush clone?
You are right in that bias is in the eye of the beholder.
Many people feel Fox is fair and balanced just as many people feel the Washington Post is.
The key is if the news service shares you bias then you see it as unbiased.
To be honest every liberal should only get their news from Fox and every conservative should only get their news from NPR.
I do feel that McCain got a bad deal. I think he would make a good president and this to be honest was his last chance at it.
That being said I really do hope Obama is a good president I wish him all the luck in the world.
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:Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree with the NPR crack. I do agree that in the circle of my conservative friends, cracking on NPR as liberal is a common theme. But I listen to NPR and they work very hard to be non-biased. You rarely detect it in their stories or how they conduct their interviews. Sometimes you do though like Terry Gross blunder of an interview with Mrs. Cheney.
I, however, am a Liberal. I fully recognize the MSNBC bias and admit it as much as I recognize the Fox bias. Both networks have some good shows, and some clowns. Just because I am liberal does not mean I don't see a biased show for what it is. I wonder though if conservatives can tell the same.
I used to think McCain would make a good president but not anymore. He ran a bad campaign. If you cant run a campaign and drive your people, your not looking good to be running the executive. McCain of 2000/2004 would have made a good president. McCain before he sold his soul to the Bush team.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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:5, Insightful)
Not enough bankers have jumped from the top floors, but personally I consider that a negative.
They have, but those golden parachutes just don't allow for the satisfying splat that we'd like to see reported. That seems to be the biggest problem with the financial industry these days. Salary and bonuses don't seem to have any relation whatsoever to performance. The banks are taking the bailout money and continuing to pay dividends and big bonuses to execs. W T F ?!
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: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, Insightful)
I think you missed the point. When Mother Theresa runs against Pol Pot, the press is not biased if she gets 'painted' in a better light. The press was exceedingly kind to McCain, especially on his VP pick.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, the media says x > y, therefore x must be greater than y.
Don't believe everything you read.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>realize that the right of free speech comes with the duty to exercise it responsibly.
Translation: You can only say what "the authorities" allow you to say. In that case it's no longer FREE speech. It's slave speech (where your mouth is no longer your own, but is controlled by somebody else). Anybody who attempts to take away my right to say or print whatever I feel like saying will answer for it to the fullest measure. "From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson.
If you want balance, you do it through freedom and liberty, not control. If the Washington Post prints Obama-loving articles, than you counterbalance that with your own paper which prints McCain-loving articles. You then leave it to the People to decide, for themselves, where the truth lies. Not some authoritarian censor.
Re: You can only say what "the authorities" allow (Score:5, Insightful)
You're overlooking one critical aspect of responsibility: it's not an external decision imposed on you. It's an internal decision you impose on yourself.
Yes, the First Amendment gives you the right to say almost anything you care to. Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is an example of something the First Amendment does not give you the right to do. The example of the Westboro Baptist Church, on the other hand, is something that is protected under First Amendment rights.
Where does responsibility meet the First Amendment? In the first case, by not spreading false and potentially harmful information. In the second case... there's no act of responsibility behind that particular organization's communications.
Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Note, however, that more favorable coverage is not the same thing as bias. For example, in covering the debate between advocates of intelligent design and advocates of evolution, "balanced" coverage -- coverage that is not favorable to one side or the other -- is biased, because intelligent design is not science. This is not to deny that bias might have existed in election coverage, but that isn't the only source of disparity between the treatments of the candidates.
One important source in this case was the quality of the campaigns. Obama ran a superb campaign. It was organized, disciplined and consistently on-message. McCain's campaign was none of these things. They kept searching for a new message, then circling back to ones that weren't working, like the Ayers issue. They could have raised Ayers again if momentum was swinging their way, but it wasn't; it was just an issue that hadn't stuck that they they were stuck on because they didn't know how to swing the election back their way. This lack of focus created a vacuum into which negative coverage expanded.
McCain himself couldn't stick to the script, and had to cut off press access, which is bad for a candidate who based his career on accessibility. Palin's lack of polish really undermined McCain's strongest issue in this election: even Obama supporters have to admit it would be better if he had a full term in the Senate under his belt.
This was a Democratic year; to overcome that, McCain's campaign needed to put together a message that resonated, and slowly dig itself out of the hole over the course of weeks. Obama showed how to do this. He started in a hole against Hilary Clinton, and his campaign demonstrated the staying power to wear down her lead over months and months.
McCain isn't like that; he's mercurial, given to dramatic gestures and sudden improvisations. That might work in an even year, but not this year. None of the big things he did that were supposed to sway the election, such as selecting Palin or "suspending" his campaign, had staying power to carry him through to election day.
This election was most emphatically not McCain's to lose. It was Obama's, and the McCain campaign simply failed to seize the initiative. Obama was vulnerable, but McCain's campaign was simply not able to put those vulnerabilities into focus. The press did not snatch victory from McCain's grasp; he just never put himself in a position to grasp victory. His poor press coverage simply reflected this. A well run campaign, say Bush's 2000 campaign, determines what the press is covering and how it is covering it.
Another group of people favored Obama... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do not try to bring up "fair". (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a personal account of an election worker in Iowa dealing with voter "purges":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/10/precinct_elections_official/ [theregister.co.uk]
Do not start talking about "fair" without also addressing those purges.
And from TFA:
So you're talking about a difference of 160 stories. Over almost a year. Let's just call it a year. That means we're talking about a difference of less than 1 story every two days.
Meanwhile, McCain's 786 stories equates to just over 2 stories every day for a year.
Compared to Obama's 946 which equates to ... just over 2 stories every day for a year.
But every THIRD day, Obama would get THREE stories and McCain would only get TWO stories.
Yeah, and you're going to complain about the press "favored" Obama?
Re:Do not try to bring up "fair". (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, yes I will, because McCain's losing ratio was less than his "coverage" ratio. And then, of course, there is the content of the stories — it is not just the quantity, you know... And that's been near-universally in Obama/Biden's direction [ldsmag.com].
For example, think of the word "gaffe" for a second — it is more famous already, than the word "snafu" was at the end of Clinton's term. Every mistake made by Biden — from an actual gaffe ("Hillary Clinton would've been a better choice") to a flabbergasting moronity ("We and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon") — has been smoothed-over by the press, while Sarah Palin's inability to name another act by her boss (she did name one) was replayed on comedy and "news" channels umpteen times.
Re:Do not try to bring up "fair". (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and you're going to complain about the press "favored" Obama?
Even though it is what TFA does, you can't really just compare the raw numbers. One MSNBC commentator got a "chill up his leg" after hearing Obama speak. Obama went to Europe and every major news outlet sent high level reporters to follow him. McCain went to Iraq and Afghanistan and it was ignored.
And it's not so much that Obama got better coverage. You have to also consider the negative coverage that was left out. Take the VP's for example. Sarah Palin, who has more executive experience than anyone on the ticket, was constantly labeled as "inexperienced". Meanwhile, you have Joe Biden, who can't keep his foot out of his mouth, will say something like "Three letters: J-O-B-S", tells a wheelchair bound man to stand up, says that Hillary would have been a better choice and it is barely reported. The Tony Rezko, William Ayers, and Public Allies stories were barely touched on while Palin's trooper trouble even got it's own "Gate" suffix. Then you had the whole "Fannie/Freddie" thing. The media never reported that John McCain cosponsored a bill [govtrack.us] that would have prevented it over two years ago. Here is a McCain quote from May 25, 2006 that the media did not report:
If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
If the press had reported this, the election would have been won by McCain. Instead, they bought into the line that the whole mess was Bush's fault even though Bush also supported the bill (Democrats blocked it).
Even when Obama received negative coverage (Jeremiah Wright), it was only during the primaries. Once he received the nomination, all negative stories on Obama were labeled "old news", even though very few people pay attention to primaries and had ignored coverage up to that point.
So, sorry, simply comparing the numbers is not at all the whole story. Actually look at what was reported, and more importantly, what was not.
Re:Do not try to bring up "fair". (Score:5, Insightful)
Number of stories is a pretty silly metric anyway. There was a great bit in a Jeffery Archer book (First Among Equals, I think) explaining how the press got around equal coverage laws to favour a particular candidate. If their opposition was not photogenic, they would use the column-inches for photos, not for text. If they said particularly silly things, they would use the space to report quotes.
You can report an inane remark by Palin and an inspiring speech by Obama and get the same number of stories. You can report Obama's preacher saying 'God damn America!' and McCain talking about reducing corruption, and get the same number of stories. On a more subtle level, you can talk about Obama wanting universal healthcare in a publication with a primarily liberal readership, and it's a positive story, but run the same story in a publication with a libertarian readership and it's negative.
Re:Another group of people favored Obama... (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW: historically, when there is a serious economic downturn in an election year, the incumbent's party will lose. It does not matter if the incumbent is Democrat or Republican; voters often want change.
The 2008 post-election drinking game (Score:5, Funny)
2) Replace Bush with Obama, and post to FreeRepublic
3) Drink a shot everytime someone replies positively
4) Die of alcohol poisoning
Irony laden fun for the whole family.
Nice example of non-symmetry on Bill Maher (Score:5, Interesting)
He showed McCain's 2008 concession speech: boos from the republican crowd.
He then showed Kerry's 2004 concession speech: no boos from the democratic crowd.
Notice how it's the right always claiming that the other side is just as bad as they are. Authoritarians: it's not bad/illegal when WE do it!
Re:Nice example of non-symmetry on Bill Maher (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait [cafepress.com]
Please, make a mental tally how many times you'll see these offensive things in the next 4 years. Also, keep in mind, how many times it will be called racism if you don't support President-Elect Obama.
Not really biased (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see this as evidence of bias on the part of reporters, I see it at evidence of the Democratic Primary running as long as it did.
Also, the Republican campaign(s) threw a lot of mud which of course prompted coverage. If Mccain hadn't put Obama in the news so much, he wouldn't have been in the new so much. If the accusations had more merit the resulting coverage wouldn't have been as positive as it was.
Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words there were more positive stories on Obama because there was more positive stuff to say about him.
Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully tallies with him winning too ;-)
Justin.
A Brit.
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].
I wouldn't know (Score:5, Insightful)
I ditched the TV 20 years ago, and the newspaper 5 years ago. I don't understand why anyone listens to the "main stream media" anymore. My in-laws think everything they see on TV "news" is Gospel, however.
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.
Just throwing a radical theory out there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama ran a better campaign?
Better campaigns get better press coverage. I know that sounds crazy, but generally people doing a good job get better reviews then people doing a bad job.
Of course, in the eyes of the idiocracy that is the modern Republican party, doing a good job is evil, and reporting on it is bias.
The goal of the media isnt to report (Score:5, Insightful)
So its no surprise Obama had more favorabe coverage. He was by far the 'sexier' candidate.
(Tho Palin was hotter)
Palin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do the numbers factor in Sarah Palin at all? I'm too lazy to sign up for the Post.
She was in the news quite a bit, at least a HECK of a lot more than Biden. I'm not saying her press was "good" but there was a lot of it.
Comparing Obama+Biden vs McCain+Palin probably results in closer numbers.
Besides, are we really surprised? Obama running as the Democrat nominee was history in the making. Of course he would get more press.
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?
Favouring... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bush had a good run in the media especially in making "the case" in the war against Iraq. He got a nice handshake from the mainstream media then, but when the shoe is on the other foot it's like the end of the world. Besides, the Republicans got so unpopular after two Bush terms it would be hard enough ramming the same trash down people's throats again.
To quote Colbert... (Score:5, Insightful)
..."Reality has a strong liberal bias."
My take on this is that Obama's candidacy and success were in fact more newsworthy than McCain's. Obama changed the game in a lot of ways, both in terms of who he is and how he ran. McCain was more of a known quantity to begin with, and ran a fairly ordinary race. In fact, the most remarkable thing about McCain's campaign (apart from the stunt-casting VP pick, which generated plenty of news)was that it was so painfully typical, where McCain used to do things more his own way.
In short, if McCain had made more news, he might have gotten more headlines. Instead, he was mostly yesterday's news.
World Domination (Score:4, Interesting)
On NPR's Talk Of The Nation show last week, they had callers from all over the world give reactions to Obama's victory. I was shocked to hear Palestinians, Iranians and everyone be so totally knowledgeable about US internal politics. They talked about the Christian Right, neocons, and more. They sounded just like American media junkie citizens.
Then it dawned on me. Thanks to satellite TV, now the whole world can watch US TV news. They are influenced by media coverage just like US residents are.
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.
Maybe I'm not conspiratorial enough in my thinking. Have we allowed a self-appointed unregulated, unaccountable group of elites to take control of world opinion and thus overshadow the power of people and governments?
Is democracy a viable form of government if voter opinions are so readily influenced and shaped by the media?
Suddenly, I'm no longer so sure that absolute freedom of the press is such a good idea any more.
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: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.
And NPR was one of the worst. (Score:4, Insightful)
While listening to NPR, I was struck by how one-sided the coverage was. The pinnacle of the disparity had to be when, during a segment on McCain, barely mentioned McCain's but they stated Obama's positions in detail.
Horrors!! Being positive causes positive coverage (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, then, are we expecting that the bizarre campaign of a man who is a shadow of who he was running with an uninformed hatemonger and which wants to continue
would get as much positive press as a smooth campaign by two qualified candidates running on a platform of
Sometimes the reason the story is positive is because the subject is positive.
When someone doesn't say anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have watched the campaigns of both McCain and Obama, there is also a clear difference in what has been said on both sides. It was even more clear for the month leading up to the election.
The Obama campaign has spent the most time saying what Barack Obama felt were the solutions to the problems, and talking about the problems out there. There was very little McCain/Palin bashing from the campaign. It may have been the press coverage, but I didn't see the Obama camp really stirring up anti-McCain feelings with fairly few advertisements saying why people should not vote for McCain.
On the other hand, EVERY rally that McCain and Palin were at showed no solutions, just reasons why they said not to vote for Obama. This shows why McCain lost, because he didn't show he was focused on why people should vote for him.
So, in the press, why should they cover, "Republican candidate bashes Obama but says nothing about how to deal with the issues" day in and day out? If McCain was more presidential BEFORE his concession speech, he would have done better.
Also, when a candidate ONLY focuses on his/her "base", it makes anyone not in that group feel that there is no reason to support that person. If people in the press have a normal bias toward a more moderate to liberal candidate, then those who are focused on ONLY targeting the conservative people, it just makes for there being no real news if that conservative candidate doesn't say anything new.
Did McCain EVER talk about having real solutions, or just how people should be afraid of having Obama as president?
Wasted away again in Freeperville (Score:5, Insightful)
The young, photogenic, would-be first black President gets more attention than the puffy old white guy? Say it ain't so, America, say it ain't so!
Of course, this is also easily explained by the fact that reality has a liberal bias.
Quality (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama makes a major speech on race, lauded by all sides, which is dully reported by the media. Did Obama dominate the headlines for a week round that, under a positive light? You betcha.
McCain "rushes" to Washington, suspends his campaign and accomplishes exactly nothing, which is dully reported under a negative light? of course!
This isn't media bias. It is candidates getting their just desserts.
Media bias would be if McCain had given a historic speech, defining his candidacy away from Bush, Rove and the religious right and it didn't get reported. But that, my friends, never happened.
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]?
Obama was just more interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm.. slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how nobody has stopped to ask... but WTF is this story doing on Slashdot? If I wanted useless partisan bickering over a news story (about news stories) I would go to Yahoo's message boards.
Oh wait, even they figured out that hosting an open forum on the Internet about politics is like giving angry monkeys a bucket of poop. That's why there's no more comments section on articles.
"News for nerds." Let's stick with that.
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.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare the CNN to the CBC in Canada and you'd swear Canada is a quasi-Socialist country!
The CNN only 'appears' to be left-biased because the rest of the media is actually right-biased. In my eye, the CNN is quite centrist.
I don't think there really is a media outlet with a left-bias in the US... But I'm speaking as a Canadian with only a passing interest in American politics.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes, I really wonder if any of you people "get out" and "see the world".
You want liberal bias? Watch or listen to PBS/NPR?
Although that said, it was NPRs in depth coverage of who Obama
actually is and where he actually came from that started to
demystify him considerably. If you scratch beneath the surface
he seems a lot less unreal (imagine that).
This is a good example of how journalists should be providing
a lot of useful information, so much so that there's enough
real information there to allow the audience to make up their
own mind and counteract whatever bias might be obvious in those
presenting it.
Enough information will eventually destroy all bias.
Of course Americans tend to be lazy and generally anti-intellectual.
So if the news is anything more than a sound bit or two it might just
get filtered out. Commercial media has to account for this.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Had the media been doing their constitutional duty...
I cannot lay my hand on any part of the U.S. (or States') Constitution that says, if I owned a tv studio, I have a duty to report the truth. All it says is: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." In other words I can say whatever I feel like saying using my tv studio. Or my newspaper. Or my blog.
If you don't like what I'm saying, then get yourself a tv studio, newspaper, or blog to say the opposite of what I said.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
To the US, much of Western Europe (minus perhaps the BBC) appears hilariously liberal - this coming from a regular reader of the NY Times (and who lives in New York) and someone who voted for Obama.
I do emphasize 'appears,' though, because I don't think this necessarily means there is a bias on the part of the reporters or the editors. By any objective measure I can think of, Obama was incredibly newsworthy. I wanted to vote for McCain (I'm a small business owner) but I couldn't stomach Palin; still, McCain received plenty of coverage around here. I think that the newspapers do their best to report stuff that they think is newsworthy, and having some arbitrary rule like 'we must publish an equal number of pieces about each candidate' is the type of gesture-laden but meaningless decision that is all too regular these days -- and it would ultimately result in fluff pieces or lowering the standards of what makes the news just so you get an even count.
My biggest beef with the NY Times is that, particularly since Obama was elected, it's been piece after piece about the 'barrier-breaking' historical significance of the event; the guy has gotten a big pass on making substantive policy statements just because he's such a 'game-changer.' I don't mean to take away the gravitas of the historical situation, but I think we've been congratulating ourselves so much on our enlightened stance that we've indirectly said that, had we elected McCain instead, it would've been nothing more than backwards racism at work (since electing Obama was so forward-thinking of us). We get quotes from people around the world like 'There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader' (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/reactions-from-around-the-world/?scp=3&sq=america%20president%20rest%20of%20world%20follow&st=cse) and similar comments praising the basic fact of the event itself.
So it comes as no surprise to me that McCain would have to work twice as hard to get attention from such a 'landmark' event. I like and respect Obama, and I'm very interested to see how he'll do - but I think we let him skate by, particularly in the debates, with a lot of vague promises. I'll celebrate him being a game-changer once the game has actually changed.
As for your original point, though, a (more liberal) friend of mine pointed out that, even in spite of the semi-regular absence of substance -- these were campaign promises, after all, and he's hardly alone in making vague ones -- there is an unavoidable perk in our reputation abroad not because Obama is a proven diplomat (he isn't) but because he's not George Bush and not a Republican.
Small business owner? Don't vote conservative (Score:5, Interesting)
I wanted to vote for McCain (I'm a small business owner)
That would have been a mistake. Unless your business is insanely profitable, you would've gained nothing from McCain. His health insurance plan, for instance, would have been a disaster for everyone but insurance companies. In general, conservative policies are only good for big business and the investor class.
We've had the same BS with Sarkozy here; he claims he's pro-business, but his fiscal measures only profited the wealthiest. And most small business owners aren't that rich. In particular, just like McCain's plan, he targeted income tax; if your small biz is incorporated, as it should be (mine is!), this makes no difference at all to the business itself. It only matters when you've made so much money that you are going to pay yourself.
And if you don't want to pay that income tax, just invest that surplus money into expanding the business. Corollary: with decreasing income tax, it becomes more attractive for the small biz owner to just take more of the profits, instead of investing and hiring.
Re:Small business owner? Don't vote conservative (Score:5, Interesting)
That would have been a mistake. Unless your business is insanely profitable, you would've gained nothing from McCain
My business is not insanely profitable (though it is profitable) and you are incorrect. I stand to benefit considerably in the short term from Obama's policies - I'll get a tax cut and my health care will be cheaper, but I'm not convinced that it will be better, as I'm leery of government stepping in to the health care arena even more than it already does. I believe that healthcare is a responsibility and not a right and my lowest point with respect to Obama came when he gave the all-to-easy 'health care is a right' answer during one of the debates. I pay $320/mo for moderate (not great) health insurance right now and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to that going down, but at what long-term cost? I don't want Canada's health care system, or the UK's, and I don't buy Obama's assertion that we can provide a single-payer national system while still keeping private insurance -- sooner or later the Dems are going to make it even more difficult to be a doctor in this country than they already have. My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
If Obama's tax plan passes then it will create a dis-incentive for me to perform beyond a certain point. Right now I deal exclusively with contractors. As a NYC-based business I already have very little incentive to grow a business with full-time employees -- and I'm originally from Delaware, where the opposite is true.
McCain's tax and health care plan made quite a lot of sense to me. I am always delighted to hear people who do not run businesses tell me what I would or would not have gained, though, but the reality is that you don't know until you run the numbers. Because I support just myself right now, I'm in the clear - but the last thing I want to do is to be running a small business that does gross over a million or so a year (gross, not net, and that's still 'small') because then I'm squarely in the crosshairs of the 'big business' that liberals love to hate and love to tax, regardless of how big a business I think I am.
'Just invest that surplus money into expanding the business' sounds a bit pithy and easy, like there's some magical button I press to keep my capital expenses up and my profits down. It's not always up to me.
Finally, I have read Obama's web site (and McCain's). I want to do the best that I can and I have no problem paying taxes - but I could've planned much more for what McCain planned to do than I can from what I know about Obama's initiatives. Both guys have a big problem telling us how they're going to pay for any of their plans, but I had confidence that McCain is going to be a, well, conservative spender, based on a clear record. Obama's simply unproven.
If I'd voted just in the interest of my small business then I would've voted McCain. But there's more to being an American than my bottom line, even if that's my only source of income. I'd consider myself a 'Republican Reptile' ala PJ O'Rourke - fiscally conservative (in the 'small government' sense) but socially liberal - and neither party has represented my views for so long as I've been eligible to vote. The McCain of 2000 was probably the closest I've seen.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not an ideologue - I really do respect both Obama and McCain and I think either one is fundamentally better for the US than Bush. I try to deal in day-to-day stuff that affects me while not losing sight of the shape the country and its finances are in. I saw just as much (if not more) anti-White racism during the campaign as I did anti-Black, and right now I'm looking through the congressional record to find the exact votes between 2002 and 2004 wher
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest beef with the NY Times is that, particularly since Obama was elected, it's been piece after piece about the 'barrier-breaking' historical significance of the event;
I think that is likely because it was a historically significant, barrier-breaking event. I don't disagree that the # of articles saying such has become overwhelming, but that is hardly unexpected.
the guy has gotten a big pass on making substantive policy statements just because he's such a 'game-changer.'
I kept seeing this all the time during the campaign, and it made no sense then either. His website has a very long list on its issues [barackobama.com] page, each with links to more detailed policy positions. There *is* a wealth of information out there on his policy preferences and stances. He certainly does not stand up and read such policy papers...because that would be *boring*. However, they exist, and in more detail than the 90% of voters care about (shit, I clicked on a random issue..."rural" and got a 13 page policy paper).
Additionally, it is pretty traditional that a president-elect not encroach too much on the current president's arena, the whole "There is only one president" construct. Lame duck though he may be, Bush is still the only one who gets to fulfill presidential duties for another couple months.
but I think we let him skate by, particularly in the debates, with a lot of vague promises.
That is no different than the treatment McCain got (ie his proclamation that he would balance the federal budget in 4 years followed by no actual discussion or questioning of what combination of spending cuts or revenue increases could produce such an situation) Debates have turned into pablum (for the leading candidate) and sound-bite attacks (for the trailing candidate), and the actual information content is just a dribble.
I'll celebrate him being a game-changer once the game has actually changed.
Well that's the point of those congratulatory articles...election of a black man has changed the game on one level. You can now tell little black boys (but not white or black girls, or homosexual, or native american, or etc etc) that they could grow up to be president and have it be more than theoretical fantasy. That is a major change for the country. Will Obama be successful as a president? Will he be able to improve governance? As you point out, that still remains to be seen.
-Ted
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? To the rest of the world (or at least western Europe)
Amerocentrism bad, eurocentrism good!
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:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I was about to respond to the parent by saying that some people mistakenly think Godwin's law is an actual law. But you kindly demonstrated for me.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they didn't...
Even in their own countries people opposed those dictators. Some didn't even know (their own fault in part I admit) the extent of the evil those men did. Most people were bystanders, who might have done something, but choose to stand aside because they didn't want to have their families hurt.
And seriously, how is four men, from four countries, "most of the world"? A large part of the rest of the world fought against them you know?
Not to count how the heck you can justify such a statement and how it relates to modern European and worldwide sensibilities, when most European countries are social-democrats, when those countries that lived under such monsters are now stable democracies (Russia excluded). Maybe you should pay more attention to what goes on in the world now, instead of wearing your post-WW2 rose-tinted Made in USA glasses (hint: they're Made in China now).
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
A story about an American newspaper, dealing with American politics, and an American scale of liberal/conservative bias has nothing to do with the rest of the world.
i only wish that were true. the fact that you think it is only goes to highlight how ignorant some americans are about the ramifications of the behaviour of their government with regards to everyone else in the world. I'll clue you in. THEY'RE [wikipedia.org] MASSIVE [wikipedia.org]. And the behaviour of your government can only be influenced by the will of the american populace - so your attitudes as reflected through your media are of great interest to everyone else in the world.
It's in the article. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".
That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.
Re:It's in the article. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".
That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.
Add to that - the ones people wanted to read
That's possible. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the reactions here (on Slashdot) to articles about the candidates various technological positions did seem to do fairly well from a "number of comments" point of view.
I'd say that this is more a matter of the same phenomena that we see in every election now. The "pundits" talk about whatever is easiest for them to talk about. And they're words get coverage because it's easier for the "reporters" to just regurgitate whatever they've heard.
So, rather than research a subject and ask INFORMED questions of the candidates THEMSELVES we get the topic de jour from the pundits, then echoed by the reporters, then echoed by other reporters and then echoed by other pundits. Since all of the pundits and reporters are talking about it, it MUST be an important issue, right?
I think that is why we saw so many websites pop up this election that did independent fact-checking of the candidates' public statements.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh.
You often hear hard-right folks complaining about liberal media bias. And I also often hear hard-left folks whining about the media's conservative bias.
Here's the reality: the media is fairly centrist, vaguely center-left. Obama isn't a hard-left liberal. He's pretty much center-left. Most voters are vaguely center-right, with a significant center-left contingent. The folks that complain the loudest are usually either hard-left, hard-right or some minority political position.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Is there any surprise? The media (with the exception of Fox News) has always had a pretty large liberal bias.
Having said that, Obama is young, charismatic, and is promoting the change America wants. He would have won either way.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias!
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I think what makes Fox "fair and balanced" is that for the most part the commentators announce their bias. That way you can take what they say with a grain of salt. I personally think this is a much more honest way to present political news.
The other networks, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc, do not make the political views of the commentators known. For the most part it is known or implied, but not announced. So uninformed viewers that only pay attention during the election cycle think they are seeing "unbiased reporting".
I don't think there is such a thing as unbiased reporting. Any intelligent person is going to be biased, i.e. have an opinion. If someone is truly not biased then it just means to me they are not very bright.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
I voted McCain; I was (and am) a fan of the pork-barrel spending cuts he wanted to implement
So what are you going to do to solve the other 98% of the Federal budget deficit after you get rid of earmarks? And what's pork? Most Americans would view stuff that their own Congressman brings home as "economic development" and stuff that the other 434 bring home as "pork". Might it just be that some earmarks actually serve a valid purpose and that purpose is lost somewhere in all the discussion about the abuse and excess?
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
But then the "red" states would suffer. You see, they take from the economically more productive "blue" states, on average. It is ironic that the GOP whines about income redistribution, when their states benefit from it.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192719/index.htm [cnn.com]
Re:Obama will be Vladimir Putin's bitch. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who makes my sandwich at lunch for minimum wage works harder than I do. Maybe he didn't work as hard in school, or isn't as smart or whatever, but you know, somebody has to make the sandwiches. I personally appreciate the people who do that (or who take out the trash, mow the grass at the park, etc). I don't mind paying 4% higher taxes so that they can be taken care of when they get brain cancer or something.
Conservatives need to get over this nonsense idea that rich business owners are the hardest-working members of society and the only ones who deserve all the perks. My salary is not determined entirely by how hard I work; a large part involves market forces outside my control. I'd be a moron to not realize that I'm at least a little bit lucky. This argument over who is working the hardest does not favor the wealthy.
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].
That's the cardinal problem with these surveys (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Its also worth a mention that McCain got a big pass on the Keating 5 scandal on the 80s and his sudden move towards anti-abortion right when he started running for president. McCain also didnt take any big foreign trips and didnt command an audience of over 100k. Towards the end he was having a hard time filling small venues.
Its also worth mentioning that his pick of Sarah Palin guaranteed the attention would be on her instead of him. Id like to see this study expand to cover her also.
Lastly, Im so sick of the "liberal media" canard. Lots of conservative politicans get a pass from the media. Bush started a war with Iraq because of false connections between Saddam and 9/11 and WMDs. Its only recently that the press has stood up to this, 5 years late.
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.
Re:The death of American journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yah (Score:4, Insightful)
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:... and? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Nerds" are not wholly unaffected by government. It's unfortunate, but true.