Is media playing fair in campaign coverage?

[yeahYeah]

Is media playing fair in campaign coverage? - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK - Television news' royalty will fly in to meet Barack Obama during this week's overseas trip: CBS chief anchor Katie Couric in Jordan on Tuesday, ABC's Charles Gibson in Israel on Wednesday and NBC's Brian Williams in Germany on Thursday.
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The anchor blessing defines the trip as a Major Event and — much like a "Saturday Night Live" skit in February that depicted a press corps fawning over Obama — raises anew the issue of fairness in campaign coverage.
The news media have devoted significantly more attention to the Democrat since Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her campaign and left a two-person contest for the presidency between Obama and Republican John McCain, according to research conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
News executives say there are reasons for the disparity, such as the continuing story about whether Clinton's and Obama's supporters can reconcile. They even partly blame McCain. By criticizing Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience, McCain raised the stakes for Obama's trip, "especially if he winds up going into two war zones," said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News.
Obama has traveled to Afghanistan and is expected to go to Iraq. He is also scheduled to visit Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England. Network anchors stayed home during McCain's recent foreign excursions.
"The question really needs to be posed: Is this type of coverage fair?" said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. "This is nothing but a political stunt."
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh said none of this should be a surprise.
"My prediction is that the coverage of Obama on this trip will be oriented toward countering the notion he has no idea what he is talking about on foreign policy and defense issues and instead will prop him up as a qualified statesman," Limbaugh told The Associated Press. "McCain, on the other hand, is a known quantity on these issues and his position does not excite nor fit the mainstream media's narrative on Iraq and Afghanistan, so they simply ignore it and him."
Along with newsworthiness, the question of fairness was discussed within ABC News before it was agreed Gibson would travel, said Jon Banner, executive producer of "World News." Also, if one network anchor decides to hit the road for a big event, chances are the others will follow.
"We have already been in discussions with the McCain campaign to try to afford them the same or a similar opportunity," Banner said. "We have gone to great lengths to be fair and provide equal time to both campaigns."
Shortly after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, Gibson flew to Miami for a McCain interview, he said.
For each of the weeks between June 9 and July 13, Obama had a much more significant media presence. The Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates more than 300 political stories each week in newspapers, magazines and television to measure whether each candidate is talked about in more than 25 percent of the stories.
Every week, Obama played an important role in more than two-thirds of the stories. For July 7-13, for example, Obama was a significant presence in 77 percent of the stories, while McCain was in 48 percent, the PEJ said.
Sure, there are some weeks Obama's going to make more news, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
But every week?
"No matter how understandable it is given the newness of the candidate and the historical nature of Obama's candidacy, in the end it's probably not fair to McCain," he said.
The Democrat has proven an attractive commodity; TV debates involving Democrats this campaign consistently drew more viewers than the Republicans. A Time magazine cover with Obama in 2006 was the second-best-selling of the year, and a Men's Vogue cover outsold every issue but the debut, according to circulation figures reported by Cond Nast Portfolio Magazine - Top News - Business & News Blogs - Business Strategy. Newsweek has done six covers with Obama over the past year, two with McCain. A Rolling Stone cover with Obama stopped just short of adding a halo.
If the attention gap continues, the campaign will essentially become a referendum on Obama, Rosenstiel said. While that may serve McCain's purpose — it beats a referendum on President Bush — it could leave the nation electing a president while the media are paying attention to someone else. Past press infatuations, like Howard Dean in 2004 and McCain in 2000, didn't turn into long-term affairs.
TV executives noted that Obama has courted attention, particularly for the overseas trip, more so than McCain. There's some danger involved, too. One Obama gaffe while overseas, or the appearance that he's not ready for an international spotlight, and the media's elite will be there to judge him, said Bob Zelnick, Boston University journalism professor.
Friedman cautioned against reading too much into things like PEJ's coverage index, noting that it's a long campaign. Yet it's an open question about whether Obama is simply a more interesting candidate at this point, partly because McCain has been on the scene longer.
While fairness is the goal, "what are we supposed to do, go gin up some story about McCain to get some rough equality of airtime?" he said. "I don't think so."
NBC News President Steve Capus said he finds it funny this is an issue, considering how much people have accused the press corps — and still do — of being too cozy with McCain. The Arizona senator had been a frequent guest of "Meet the Press."
"We're just trying to do our jobs," Capus said. "There's no question that there's great news value in Sen. Obama's trip overseas. That's why we are doing this."

there is no doubt in most people minds that the media is goo goo ga ga over the messiah. Coverage is openly pro-Obama. The meer fact that the messiah has the media dream team orgasming daily on the plane with him is proof enough.

this "say and do anything tour" is what they want.

[FLSTFI Dave]

MSNBC and NBC are so far into Obama they have both Said he will win.

They faun over Obama like he is a God.

The others are pretty bad too, except fox does question both canidates. The others only question McCain.

Seems to me, the media is doing there very best to push the election to Obama.....

they sure do not Report any more, they only spin.....

[rpsmith]

Is media playing fair in campaign coverage?

[Brickboy240]

Yeah...I too laughed at that title.

How about the fawning over Obamas trip to the war zones going on right now?

Not once is it mentioned the COST of this little PR extravaganza...and I'll bet its costing the taxpayer PLENTY.

A privately held company making profit....well...thats suspect and worthy of casting in a bad light on several broadcasts but the unnecessary expensive travel of an elected official campaigning when the economy is in bad shape? Nah...no need to examine that or even act remotely worried!

LOL

- brickboy240

[AZXD]

I blame the GOP .... This has been going on for a long time now. They didn't question the intentional bias during the debates .... So now that they have realized the dogs are loose ... Uh, it's a little to late.

More opinion:
Nyt Rejects Mccain's Editorial; Should 'mirror' Obama

[yeahYeah]

Originally Posted by AZXD

I blame the GOP .... This has been going on for a long time now. They didn't question the intentional bias during the debates .... So now that they have realized the dogs are loose ... Uh, it's a little to late.

More opinion:
Nyt Rejects Mccain's Editorial; Should 'mirror' Obama

the GOP has no spine - the reason why they are in the minority now.

[trik396]

I cannot ever remember the media being fair with ANYTHING let alone showering a liberal with more praise over a conservative (that's what I have to call McCain compared to Obama). The media has an agenda. They will only play towards that agenda and nothing more. That's why I hate it when people bash FOX news. Someone needs to be a bit more conservative than the rest for christs sake.

[FLSTFI Dave]

Left leaning media bias...Even the Libral Bastion Harvard says so..

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.
Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

Here is another Far left Liberal school saying the media is very Biased to the left....

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist / UCLA Newsroom

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

Mideast Dispatch Archive: Thorough new UCLA study finds U.S. media more left-wing than previously thought

MAJOR NEW IMPARTIAL STUDY FINDS:
18 OF TOP 20 U.S. MEDIA OUTLETS HAVE LEFT-WING BIAS

[Note by Tom Gross]

It is an open secret among journalists (though still not realized by much of the public) that many media professionals allow their political opinions to cloud what they often present as straight news reporting, and that in the vast majority of cases, those political opinions are left-wing.

Such accusations of bias are nothing new, and therefore I don’t often send them on this list. However, worthy of note is a very thorough new study, undertaken over the last three years by professors from UCLA (in California), using a team of 21 research assistants all over America. The report, which was released on Friday and is published in the new issue of the “Quarterly Journal of Economics,” finds that the left-wing slant among journalists in the American media is much greater than previously thought.

Of the 20 major American media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal.

So to well know very liberal institutions say the media leans left. Yet we still have a poster who thinks the media is not at all biased, or it leans right....

www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf

www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664