He probably gets more negative coverage because a) he’s in serious shit electorally and b) he’s full of shit in general, and the media should have a bias towards the truth.
Why people think the media should be even-handed I cannot comprehend, it being an impossible task. They should simply be honest.
This is kind of like complaining because a rookie pitcher new to the major leagues gets more scrutiny and criticism of his mistakes than a seasoned pro who’s been pitching for years. Why would you expect it to be any different? Why would you assume that bias has to be a factor?
Yes, everything Palin says or does is news, because Palin’s so new. Biden’s occasional gaffes aren’t telling us anything about Biden that we don’t already know from his years in government, including his previous Presidential campaign. Palin’s remarks, however, are revealing a political figure almost completely unknown heretofore, who is aspiring to an extremely important and potentially powerful national office.
Naturally Palin’s going to be under the microscope much more than Biden is. The McCain campaign must have been well aware of that when they picked her for the Veep slot. They presumably thought that the interest excited by her novelty factor would play out to their advantage, and that the extra attention paid to her would keep their ticket in the limelight and make them look good.
Well, that was something of a miscalculation on the part of the McCain folks, but I don’t think there’s any call to blame “liberal media bias” for the results. They picked a lemon, and now she’s getting squeezed. Whining about how mean the media is being to her is just an ass-covering maneuver.
Did you read the report they cite?
So, the reporting derived from action McCain did rather than some “out to get him” bias.
Let’s take an extreme. Pretend McCain at one of his stump speeches pulled out a puppy and shot it. I think it is reasonable to suppose he’d get some negative coverage for that.
That is what is at work here (albeit not so dramatic). McCain WAS positive till he did his weird behavior when the economic crisis hit. And before you try to suggest that was just a liberal media hit squad waiting for something such notable conservative pundits as George Will were dismayed (“Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.” – George Will)
Further, a lot of the “positive” coverage for Obama was political…or about the horse race if you prefer. Calling a story “positive” (implying a positive bias) for Obama because he is ahead in the polls is disingenuous to me. That is just reporting. “New poll says X.” It is what it is and hardly what I would call bias in any sense. That would be like reporting that the Chicago Bears won and are ahead in the North Division implies a bias for the Chicago Bears. Just ain’t so.
Just out of curiosity, while aware of all three mistakes, I don’t recall McCain’s confusion being on the Front page of the Times (NY, LA), Tribune, Wash Post, etc. Mentioned, perhaps, but was there a “McCain Can’t Tell the Difference…” headline I missed?
Forgot to add to my previous post in reply to Shodan (bolding mine):
The problem is that truth and balance are two different things. The whole point of having an election is based on the premise that one candidate is better than the other one (although we often disagree on which one is which). If the media says that Smith is better than Jones it may just be reported the objective facts. Should they make up good things about Smith or bad things about Jones in order to be even-handed?
You know, it’s kind of silly to expect reporters and editors and commentators and pundits and talking heads to treat candidates “equally”.
What’s wrong with a reporter calling it as they see it? What’s the purpose of pretending that a new segment has to play a soundbite of one guy saying X, then another guy saying not-X, otherwise it’s “biased”. Sometimes X is true. Sometimes not-X is true.
The real myth is there exists a standard of objective reporting, and that “the media” is failing to live up to such a standard. There is no such standard. What would that even mean? A study that “the media” ran 100 negative stories about Obama, 100 positive stories about Obama, 100 negative stories about McCain and 100 positive stories about McCain wouldn’t prove that the media was objective and unbiased. Why didn’t they run 100 positive and 100 negative stories about Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party? If 200 stories were run about Cynthia McKinney, would it be reasonable to expect that the positives and negatives would always be perfectly balanced? Or should we expect a lot more negative stories about McKinney, given that she’s a fucking lunatic? Should we expect the exact same number of stories about Obama and McCain and McKinney, or should we expect fewer stories about McKinney, given that she’s a nobody with no chance of getting even 1% of the vote?
Since we all agree that it is illogical to expect “even handed” coverage of McKinney compared to McCain and Obama, it’s pretty clear that it is also illogical to expect “even handed” coverage between McCain and Obama themselves. Sometimes, the truth isn’t even handed. Some people are more interesting than others. Some people sell more newspapers than others. Some people tell the truth more than others. It is illogical to pretend that everyone is equally newsworthy, and it is illogical to pretend that everyone tells the truth equally.
Senator Ted Stevens just got convicted on 7 counts of corruption charges. In order to preserve objectivity, is the media obligated to run a negative story about his challenger every time they report on the Stevens corruption story? No they aren’t. In this case, one candidate is on trial for corruption and was convicted of corruption, while the other candidate wasn’t. In this race the facts are biased against one candidate. Objectivity doesn’t demand that the media run negative stories about the other candidate to balance the negative stories about Ted Stevens, objectivity demands that they simply run the negative stories about Ted Stevens trial and conviction.
I find that sentences preceded by “Let’s face it” are usually false.
At the end of the day the media are in this for themselves. Supposing a liberal or conservative bias (barring the likes of FOX Noise) is wrongheaded. They like controversy, they like close races and more than anything they like more viewers/readers so they can sell ads. Whatever gets them to that final goal is what will push them to lean one way or another.
If Americans are stupid enough to be swayed by biased media, shouldn’t most of the blame for the result be squarely pinned on the Americans themselves?
This is - well, interesting. Which of the candidates do you feel is more analogously compared to a rookie, with no experience? Which would you expect to receive more criticism based on that?
Then, by that standard, Obama should be getting much more criticism than McCain, because McCain has many years of national experience and Obama has not.
Nothing at all, providing they are clear that they are presenting an opinion piece and not a news story. It is only when things like the Halperin memo surface that it becomes clear that they are doing the one while pretending to do the other. Because that memo said, clearly and directly, that Kerry lied “all the time”, but that treating those lies equally with Bush’s would result in Bush’s winning the election.
Because if you are going to present something as a fact, then it should be possible to prove it as a fact, and not as an opinion. It is when reporters present their opinions as facts that we start to run into bias.
If you are asserting that it is an objective fact that every single Republican candidate for President for the last thirty years was less qualified than the Democrat, then the unrelieved record of more negative coverage for the Republican makes sense. I believe it is an opinion. If I want to read an opinion piece, I will read one. If I am looking for news, I read the news, and I expect to see a complete - and yes, balanced - presentation of the facts.
And when the news media goes outside of the facts, to the point where they present forgeries as real and explicitly tell their people to slant their coverage, then I reserve the right to point out that this is neither news nor opinion - it is dishonest campaigning.
Palin, natch. You do remember that this is a comparison between Palin and Biden, right?
And indeed, Obama does get much more per-gaffe media scrutiny of his occasional ill-judged remarks than McCain does. Remember the weeks of comment about his one remark concerning “bitter” small-town voters clinging to “God and guns”?
Where Obama has the advantage is that he tends to be a very careful and articulate speaker, so he makes fewer embarrassing gaffes than the other candidates. Biden is a reasonably smart guy with, forensically speaking, two left feet. Palin, like George Bush, is smart and a good communicator on a personality level but lousy at conveying substantive ideas independently. McCain is a thoroughly experienced and intelligent politician, but sometimes over-impulsive (and, I suspect, feeling the combination of campaign stress and age).
Obama, on the other hand, is an orator. He’s damn good at picking his words. That doesn’t necessarily make him a better person or better Presidential material, but it is something that works to his advantage in how he’s portrayed in the media. There’s no point trying to blame that on “liberal media bias”, any more than it’s the fault of media bias that Dennis Kucinich is short and funny-looking while Mitt Romney is tall and handsome.
The response was to you referring to Palin. Her analogous counterpart is Biden. Regardless of what you think of the people when it comes to experience Biden is a FAR better known quantity. Heck, he’s been a Senator a good deal longer than McCain (over 35 years). Heck, Palin was ten years old when Biden assumed office. The comparison in experience is not even close between Palin and Biden. When it comes to coverage Biden has been through the media vetting mill for ages. He’s a very well known quantity. Palin on the other hand has been in the mainstream media spotlight for what…8 weeks or so?
If you want to compare Palin to Obama she in no way has more experience. At best (and I think it is stretching it) they are on par with each other from a time-in-office standpoint. When it comes to coverage though Obama has been through the media wringer for over a year running his presidential campaign. Far longer and far more scrutinized than Palin’s 8-weeks.
So, she is running for VPOTUS, I think scrutiny of her is more than merited since till she was nominated few outside of Alaska even knew she existed.
Not criticism. Scrutiny (which may swing either way). Obama has received that scrutiny (as has McCain) in spades. The McCain campaign however saw fit to hide Palin from the public who will vote for her not to mention the media had mere weeks to sort through everything that the other candidates have done over months and years.
You can easily report facts in a biased way. I forget where I read this (ages ago) but it is one of my favorite examples of biased reporting of facts.
There are two cars in a race. A Russian car and an American car. The American car wins the race. The next day the Russian news reports that the Russian car came in second while the American car came in next-to-last.
Perfectly accurate reporting but misleading. Critical reading is your friend.
Any truly comprehensive studies struggle (at best) to show any significant bias in any major, mainstream media source (Fox News excepted.) It takes A LOT of cherry picking to show any bias.
The meme of liberal media is really a crock, and people who espouse it reveal their own prejudices more than anything else.
I think it would depend on which candidate’s voters are more misinformed (e.g., McCain voters thinking Obama is a secret Muslim) or incompletely informed (e.g., Obama’s voters not being made aware of the extent of his ties to Ayers). Are there any studies on this?
OK, let’s try again. Please produce the evidence that you believe establishes that Fox News is biased. We will then use the same sort and kinds of evidence to determine if any of the other, mainstream media are also biased.
Be sure not to include any cherry picking.
Which is an incredibly generous, overtly-singular metric for Palin.
So much of the Palin-has-experience argument depends entirely on the beltway obsession with governorship being a good predictor for elections. This election cycle has been no different from recent past in that we’ve heard endless speculation fuelled on the basis of this assumption, which ended up being asinine given the largely senatorial field who became the front-runners.
Now, I would not deny being a governor, and particularly of a governor of a southern state, would ordinarily be considered an advantage in establishing a credible national profile, but it’s just lazy thinking to think voters can never perceive national stature in anything else, and will studiously ignore all leadership qualities (or deficits) like wit, knowledge, character, inquisitiveness, national profile, policy familiarity, and intelligence.
Ok, so it’s entirely possible that Palin’s governorship could translate to that kind of stature, but pretending it’s a transitive relationship between the virtues of leadership and the governorship of Alaska, is just an insult to the intelligence of voters. It’s as if voters can’t be trusted to see beyond the political context of another state, to examine leadership qualities independently and in a national context.
Fact is, Obama is an impressive orator, he’s demonstrated expertise and competence in his meteoric rise as an outsider, in his campaign, and in putting together a AAA team of advisers on economics and foreign policy. He’s shown intellectual muscle in the way he engages day-to-day Q&A, and his background as a constitutional scholar, and being top of his class at Harvard law also helps.
None of these things are trivial or tangential virtues. Palin, in comparison, is a complete light-weight. The idea that the governor gap somehow obviates all this is simply mind boggling.
Point accepted. Fox News is free from bias, as are all the other major news organizations.
As a very liberal, never voted Republican man, I must say I am amazed at how much the press is favouring Obama. I work out in the afternoon at the gym and CNN is on. Every single day (I’ve been counting), it’s minimum 3 stories for Obama to 1 story for McCain. Usually it’s five to one.
Plus the media is scared of Obama cause he’s black. If they ask a tough question, they appear racist. Stand up comics that aren’t black are gonna have it rough, cause if they joke about Obama they’ll sound racist.
Obama refuses to do anything but his camp has used racism subtely to prevent anyone from attacking him. Attack Obama, he’ll say nothing, while his campaign calls you a racist. This was very evident with Hillary where Obama would say “This isn’t about race.” But his campaign was implying racism, and by copping out and refusing to say “My campaign shouldn’t have said that.” He’d say nothing, thus the question was avoided and people would think he’s OK. But by not saying his camp was wrong, he was playing the race card. Most people refuse to see this.
For example I’ve seen tons of reports of how white people won’t vote for Obama. But I’ve yet to see any reports about how the blacks are giving nearly 100% support to him. The past two elections blacks voted 90% Democrat.
Any kind of racism needs to be discussed.
Even as I pose this question, people will say “he’s a racist” (meaning me). Which I am far from.
The bottom line is, even though no one will admit it, the media is afraid to touch Obama cause they’ll appear racist.
No matter what the Republicans do someone says they are racist, while no one says blacks voting for blacks without any reason but the color of Obama skin ISN’T racist
Very well said Markxxx … now prepare to have your head bitten off.