As bad as The New York Times has been before, it’s nothing compared to the way the paper has managed, manipulated and mangled coverage of the 2008 campaign,” Feder observed. “Not a day goes by that The Times doesn’t misrepresent John McCain, ridicule Sarah Palin, refuse to report a revelation that reflects badly on the Obama-Biden campaign, or rationalize Obama’s radical past.”
The Pew study found that only 9% of voters think the media favors John McCain, in contrast to 70% who believe journalists favor Barack Obama. At this point in the 2004 campaign, a Pew survey found that 50% of Americans thought the press favored John Kerry, compared with 22% who thought it preferred George W. Bush.
A study of media coverage of the candidates in the six weeks following the nominating conventions, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, showed four times as many negative stories about McCain as about Obama.
Feder further notes that according to a Rasmussen report earlier this year, only 24% of Americans have a favorable opinion of The New York Times, “making the paper almost as popular as trial lawyers.” Read more .....Boycott The New York Times
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
How do they learn about their political leaders?
Most of my students are Obama supporters. I’m not and they know it. I knew they would be giving me plenty of “I told you so’s” that day and I wasn’t looking forward to it. In the first class, students asked if I’d heard that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country and not a continent.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Where did you hear that?
“On television this morning,” said one student and another concurred right away. “She’s pretty dumb,” he said.
“What news show were you watching?” I asked. Neither could tell me, but I learned later that the information came from sources in the McCain campaign and was widely reported in the Mainstream Media. For two months, students had been repeating reports about how ignorant and inexperienced Sarah Palin was. I asked each class that day how many of them had seen reports like that. About two-thirds raised their hands. Several told me Palin spent too much on clothes, thought she could see Russia from her house in Alaska, shot animals from a plane, had a pregnant teenaged daughter, or avoided answering interview questions. See more......http://www.aim.org/guest-column/objective-pretense-media-bias-and-the-electorate/
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Where did you hear that?
“On television this morning,” said one student and another concurred right away. “She’s pretty dumb,” he said.
“What news show were you watching?” I asked. Neither could tell me, but I learned later that the information came from sources in the McCain campaign and was widely reported in the Mainstream Media. For two months, students had been repeating reports about how ignorant and inexperienced Sarah Palin was. I asked each class that day how many of them had seen reports like that. About two-thirds raised their hands. Several told me Palin spent too much on clothes, thought she could see Russia from her house in Alaska, shot animals from a plane, had a pregnant teenaged daughter, or avoided answering interview questions. See more......http://www.aim.org/guest-column/objective-pretense-media-bias-and-the-electorate/
Monday, November 10, 2008
Networks Gave Obama the Nomination
From Newsmax:
Report: Networks Gave Obama the Nomination
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
An exhaustive, eight-year Media Research Center study of the Big Three TV networks’ coverage of Barack Obama shows that their favorable spin on the Democrat gave him his margin of victory in the primaries, according to MRC president Brent Bozell.
The MRC notes that this year saw the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point — 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast — separating Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June.
“But Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks,” an MRC report on the study states.
“At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign.”
The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC logged every story, sound bite, and mention of Obama on ABC, CBS and NBC evening news telecasts from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries this past June — a total of 1,365 stories.
Among the key findings:
The three broadcast networks ran 462 positive stories about Obama — 34 percent of the total — compared with only 70 stories (5 percent) that were critical.
NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports, more than 10 times the number of anti-Obama stories, 17. The CBS Evening News ran 156 stories in favor of Obama, compared to just 21 anti-Obama reports. ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor — 127 positive stories to 32 negative reports.
Barack Obama received his best press “when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene,” the MRC report observed. All three networks lavished him with praise when he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full network reports, one each on ABC and NBC, and was mentioned in just 15 other stories. Also, CBS and NBC initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Obama’s best press of this year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6. After that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just 1 percent that were critical.
The networks referred to Obama as a “liberal” only 14 times in four years, while on twice as many occasions reporters referred to him as either a “rock star,” “rising star,” or “superstar” during the same period.
Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 that offered a negative opinion, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.
Brent Bozell said in a statement: “This study proves emphatically and without question that the Big Three networks had a horse in this year’s Democratic primary race. And that with their wall-to-wall, 24-hour daily assistance, NBC, ABC and CBS provided Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory.
“As the liberal media’s ardor with Sen. Hillary Clinton evaporated, so too did the inevitability of her victory. The press fixated their infatuated gazes on Sen. Obama, and afforded him the crucial coverage and support he needed to win.”
Report: Networks Gave Obama the Nomination
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:27 PM
By: Jim Meyers
An exhaustive, eight-year Media Research Center study of the Big Three TV networks’ coverage of Barack Obama shows that their favorable spin on the Democrat gave him his margin of victory in the primaries, according to MRC president Brent Bozell.
The MRC notes that this year saw the closest nomination contest in a generation, with just one-tenth of a percentage point — 41,622 votes out of more than 35 million cast — separating Obama from Hillary Clinton when the Democratic primaries ended in June.
“But Barack Obama had a crucial advantage over his rivals this year: the support of the national media, especially the three broadcast networks,” an MRC report on the study states.
“At every step of his national political career, network reporters showered the Illinois Senator with glowing media coverage, building him up as a political celebrity and exhibiting little interest in investigating his past associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened his campaign.”
The Alexandria, Va.-based MRC logged every story, sound bite, and mention of Obama on ABC, CBS and NBC evening news telecasts from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries this past June — a total of 1,365 stories.
Among the key findings:
The three broadcast networks ran 462 positive stories about Obama — 34 percent of the total — compared with only 70 stories (5 percent) that were critical.
NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports, more than 10 times the number of anti-Obama stories, 17. The CBS Evening News ran 156 stories in favor of Obama, compared to just 21 anti-Obama reports. ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor — 127 positive stories to 32 negative reports.
Barack Obama received his best press “when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene,” the MRC report observed. All three networks lavished him with praise when he was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full network reports, one each on ABC and NBC, and was mentioned in just 15 other stories. Also, CBS and NBC initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Obama’s best press of this year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6. After that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just 1 percent that were critical.
The networks referred to Obama as a “liberal” only 14 times in four years, while on twice as many occasions reporters referred to him as either a “rock star,” “rising star,” or “superstar” during the same period.
Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 that offered a negative opinion, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.
Brent Bozell said in a statement: “This study proves emphatically and without question that the Big Three networks had a horse in this year’s Democratic primary race. And that with their wall-to-wall, 24-hour daily assistance, NBC, ABC and CBS provided Sen. Barack Obama’s margin of victory.
“As the liberal media’s ardor with Sen. Hillary Clinton evaporated, so too did the inevitability of her victory. The press fixated their infatuated gazes on Sen. Obama, and afforded him the crucial coverage and support he needed to win.”
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Media Defeats McCain?
Media Defeats McCain?
by L. Brent Bozell III
November 7, 2008 Tell a friend about this site
The election of Barack Obama was certainly historic, and the great attraction of that historic moment led to more history: an Obama-smitten news media that completely avoided their responsibility to test the nominee with hard questions. It made the gooey 1992 Clinton campaign look like a fistfight by comparison.
Obama faced none of the withering scrutiny applied to even the Republican vice presidential candidate. Instead, he was treated to a nearly constant string of encomiums and tributes to his transformational candidacy, while nearly every possible pitfall of political embarrassment or inconvenience has been omitted or dismissed.
The investigative resources of the networks – who combed over Wasilla, Alaska looking for earmarks and pregnancy tests – showed a complete disinterest in traveling to Hawaii or the South Side of Chicago to cast a skeptical eye on any part of Obama’s own preferred campaign narrative.
The big question now: If the media couldn’t scrutinize the man before he was elected, why would they feel the drive to do so afterwards? They won’t. They worked for his election. They will now work for his administration. Past is prologue.
Take the last few Obama fawn-a-thons before the election as examples of things to come. Just one week after NBC’s Brian Williams put up his dukes with John McCain and Sarah Palin, demanding to know if they would keep the pledge to avoid the anti-American harangues of Obama’s long-time minister Jeremiah Wright, he had Obama on the set. The contrast was crystal clear as he asked Obama about how the poor man can’t walk down the street in Honolulu mourning the approaching death of his grandmother.
“According to the press pool traveling with you, you asked to just take a walk and be alone,” he oozed sympathetically. “Guess it’s part of the contract you make when you run in such an extended campaign, but, the human in you, and the husband and father and grandson, must want to just bust out sometimes, or disappear, if you can’t go for a walk like that?”
CBS anchor Katie Couric, last seen ripping into Palin, also used her last pre-election interview to ask about Obama’s personal feelings, about whether he was a “nervous wreck” about the vote, and “If things go your way on Tuesday and you become this nation’s first African-American President, what will that mean to you personally?”
Couric was tough during that interview – but on the Republicans. She focused Obama on Republicans daring to press the Reverend Wright issue: “The Pennsylvania Republican Party is starting to run an ad in that state which features your former minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, saying quote, ‘God damn America.’ Do you think they would have run that ad without the approval of the McCain campaign?”
Even in the last days of this race, saying “God damn America” was far less reprehensible to the media than replaying it.
Both anchors thought they were being tough by asking the drape-measuring question regarding how Democrats might overreach if they hold all the levers of power in Washington, but both phrased it in a tone which said “Please reassure voters that this is not a real cause for concern.” Williams asked for “assurance” for the American people, and Couric wanted Obama to “assuage” public fears.
The burden of scrutinizing and questioning the new Democratic ruling machine in Washington is already being shrugged off by the Obama press. Once again, it’s going to fall on Fox News Channel and alternative media outlets from radio to the Internet to try and hold Obama accountable. No wonder the Democrats are making noise about crushing anti-Obama dissent on the airwaves with a revised version of the old “Fairness Doctrine.”
In the primary elections, it became clear when it was over that Obama’s win of just one-tenth of a percentage point of the 35 million votes cast that the media’s pro-Obama bias created that narrow margin of victory. The general election result wasn’t that close, and the punishing circumstances of vigorous Bush hatred and the collapse of economic confidence possibly were just too much for the GOP nominee to overcome.
But try and imagine how different this campaign would have looked if the media’s momentum manufacturers favored McCain with all the unashamed ardor and aggression that they brought in support of Obama. Deep down, the media agree with Evan Thomas that their bias can add five or ten points to a Democrat’s vote total, and they eagerly demonstrated that they were ready to shred their own credibility as allegedly objective referees to achieve that victorious result.
Voice Your Opinion!
Write to Brent Bozell
by L. Brent Bozell III
November 7, 2008 Tell a friend about this site
The election of Barack Obama was certainly historic, and the great attraction of that historic moment led to more history: an Obama-smitten news media that completely avoided their responsibility to test the nominee with hard questions. It made the gooey 1992 Clinton campaign look like a fistfight by comparison.
Obama faced none of the withering scrutiny applied to even the Republican vice presidential candidate. Instead, he was treated to a nearly constant string of encomiums and tributes to his transformational candidacy, while nearly every possible pitfall of political embarrassment or inconvenience has been omitted or dismissed.
The investigative resources of the networks – who combed over Wasilla, Alaska looking for earmarks and pregnancy tests – showed a complete disinterest in traveling to Hawaii or the South Side of Chicago to cast a skeptical eye on any part of Obama’s own preferred campaign narrative.
The big question now: If the media couldn’t scrutinize the man before he was elected, why would they feel the drive to do so afterwards? They won’t. They worked for his election. They will now work for his administration. Past is prologue.
Take the last few Obama fawn-a-thons before the election as examples of things to come. Just one week after NBC’s Brian Williams put up his dukes with John McCain and Sarah Palin, demanding to know if they would keep the pledge to avoid the anti-American harangues of Obama’s long-time minister Jeremiah Wright, he had Obama on the set. The contrast was crystal clear as he asked Obama about how the poor man can’t walk down the street in Honolulu mourning the approaching death of his grandmother.
“According to the press pool traveling with you, you asked to just take a walk and be alone,” he oozed sympathetically. “Guess it’s part of the contract you make when you run in such an extended campaign, but, the human in you, and the husband and father and grandson, must want to just bust out sometimes, or disappear, if you can’t go for a walk like that?”
CBS anchor Katie Couric, last seen ripping into Palin, also used her last pre-election interview to ask about Obama’s personal feelings, about whether he was a “nervous wreck” about the vote, and “If things go your way on Tuesday and you become this nation’s first African-American President, what will that mean to you personally?”
Couric was tough during that interview – but on the Republicans. She focused Obama on Republicans daring to press the Reverend Wright issue: “The Pennsylvania Republican Party is starting to run an ad in that state which features your former minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, saying quote, ‘God damn America.’ Do you think they would have run that ad without the approval of the McCain campaign?”
Even in the last days of this race, saying “God damn America” was far less reprehensible to the media than replaying it.
Both anchors thought they were being tough by asking the drape-measuring question regarding how Democrats might overreach if they hold all the levers of power in Washington, but both phrased it in a tone which said “Please reassure voters that this is not a real cause for concern.” Williams asked for “assurance” for the American people, and Couric wanted Obama to “assuage” public fears.
The burden of scrutinizing and questioning the new Democratic ruling machine in Washington is already being shrugged off by the Obama press. Once again, it’s going to fall on Fox News Channel and alternative media outlets from radio to the Internet to try and hold Obama accountable. No wonder the Democrats are making noise about crushing anti-Obama dissent on the airwaves with a revised version of the old “Fairness Doctrine.”
In the primary elections, it became clear when it was over that Obama’s win of just one-tenth of a percentage point of the 35 million votes cast that the media’s pro-Obama bias created that narrow margin of victory. The general election result wasn’t that close, and the punishing circumstances of vigorous Bush hatred and the collapse of economic confidence possibly were just too much for the GOP nominee to overcome.
But try and imagine how different this campaign would have looked if the media’s momentum manufacturers favored McCain with all the unashamed ardor and aggression that they brought in support of Obama. Deep down, the media agree with Evan Thomas that their bias can add five or ten points to a Democrat’s vote total, and they eagerly demonstrated that they were ready to shred their own credibility as allegedly objective referees to achieve that victorious result.
Voice Your Opinion!
Write to Brent Bozell
Saturday, November 8, 2008
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