Study: TV News Harder on Obama

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia27-2008jul27,0,712999.story

Just as I have said about previous studies like this, I take this one with a grain of salt. You can't really say that having X number of positive mentions and Y number of negative mentions is fair, objective or desireable.

When someone has a crummy week, they should get more negative mentions. When someone has a good week, they should get more positive mentions.

But I'll be curious to see what people who complain about the MSM have to say.

These numbers, if true, are far more relevant, IMMHO!

If the minutes of coverage were spent bashing Obama, and praising McCain for his BBQ skills, then not so much in terms of showing bias.

How the hell are they suppose to be 'hard' on McCain if they never cover him?

Why?

Very true. I think it should also be noted, that McCain is flat out boring to listen too. He doesn't have that Tony Robbins presence that Obamessiah possesses.

During their time covering him, they can have as much negative to say about him as positive.

What do you make of the coverage of Obama being more negative than positive?

This is true. One can understand why a TV producer might omit McCain coverage not due to bias, but because of McCain's soporific deportment.

Didn't McCain once call the press his "base"?

I don't believe I've ever heard a mainstream news story outright critical of Obama. In fact, in all forms of major media the only thing that might be called negative I've seen that might be called negative is the occasional "mythbuster" type story about his economics and budgets not adding up or some such. Pretty standard "all politicians do this stuff" sort of thing.

You'd have to know what the study considered to be a negative piece I suppose, to completely understand.

But then, outside CNN I see very little network news anymore so maybe they are trashing him all over the place and I hadn't noticed.

But I'm skeptical.

Yes, I can recall McCain making that comment as well.

This, a statement of fact proven by polls and the results of the last few Dem primaries, is a negative statement by NBC News? It's evidence of them being tough on Obama?

You must not watch much television.

Terrorist fist jabs, Reverend Wright, Barack Hussein Obama, Muslim Madrassah, etc.

And yeah, Obama does get more coverage. He's less boring than McCain. But he also gets more negative coverage than McCain. Honestly, I don't think I've noticed any McCain stories or scandals blown out of proportion as much as that Obama/Reverend Wright nonsense.

That Obama's a much bigger fuckup and presents them with more material than McCain.

I know that seemingly every Barry O supporter is using this as supposedly conclusively proof that the media hasn't put on their official "Black Jesus in '08" knee pads but can you actually name any newsperson besides FOX's E.D. Hill that referred to Mr and Mrs Barry O's fist bump as a "terrorist fist jab"?

How nice of you to miss the other examples.

Everyone who then went on to cover the story? In quotes, obviously, and only to cover the story, not calling Obama a terrorist. But they nonetheless reported on negative media coverage.

That's because I don't really watch enough of the presidential coverage on the other channels to make any sort of definitive statement on them, though if I had to guess I'd say that their reporting on the madrassa story is probably about the same as their reporting on the fist jab one, just lots of stories about Obama debunking the dirty lies told by the stupid conservatives.

So deriding some vapid FOX newsbabe for being stupid enough to call the Obama fist bump a "terrorist fist bump" is evidence that the media is hard on Barry O?

Not seeing that...can you give some examples of the fuckups?

Everything he says is a fuckup.

So that's a no on the examples? Basically you're spouting ODS.

The most recent one is the failure to visit the troops in Germany. Of course, you, drinking the Kool Aid by the tanker truck load, will come up with a bogus rationalization of this.

Of course they aren't going to cover McCain.

I've watched McCain and I've watched paint dry. I'd rather watch the paint dry.

Did he have permission to visit the troops but chose to skip it?

Or was it that he wasn't allowed to visit the troops?

I don't know but I'm curious.

Well, since his entire trip was maligned by McCain as a campaign photo-op (even though McCain all but sent Obama there), undoubtedly visiting the troops would have been folded into that perception as well. He'd have been criticized for visiting them or not, which is the nature of political campaigning.

Plus, he was told his campaign staff was unwelcome, and that's all that remained with him by then. The congressional delegation had returned home.

So I'm unconvinced on that one. What else you got?

He was allowed to visit, and they were expecting him to, but because he couldn't bring his press entourage with him he went to the gym and worked out instead.

Amazingly, the same seems to be true of many (not all) of McCain's anti-Obama ads. To me, this seems like another big mistake by his campaign team: If the worst you can say about Obama spells out that he's just a politician, and that's what you believe is controversial, what image of your opponent are you painting?

It challenges viewers to fill in this blank: "Obama's supporters say he is _____________, while his opponents say he is another politician."

And then they go away thinking of Obama as something in-between __________ and a politican like McCain.

So by the standard above, is showing a clip of Jesse Jackson, saying he wants to cut Obama's nuts off considered "negative"?

My impression is the media does favor Senator Obama.

Does this study prove I'm wrong? Am I to be considered a hater of mainstream media because of my impression?

And let's be honest here, this article is yet another example of favorable treatment by the media.

Turn on your T.V to CNN,NBC or ABC and who are they talking about most of the time? Who are they covering? If Obama so much as farts there's press coverage detailing how presidential he looked doing it.I don't need a study to tell me how many times I see someone's smiling mug on T.V.