GOODY TWO SHOES: It’s News To Us!
According to Reuters, the MSM is not political biased towards liberals, but towards popularity:
Obama benefited largely from the dynamics of the campaign itself and the media's tendency to focus on the “horse race,” emphasizing ups and downs in the polls and political tactics.
As Obama's poll numbers rose in response to events, so did favorable press coverage for him, not the other way round.
“Winning begets winning coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz, an author of a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that tracked campaign coverage.
Dan Schnur, communications director for McCain's 2000 presidential bid and now head of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, agreed.
“I don't think there's partisan or ideological bias because the mainstream media tries not to take sides in policy disagreements," he said. "Favorable news coverage is ... more a function of favorable poll numbers.” …
Some scholars acknowledge that Obama also generated good press by virtue of his charisma, and his place in history as the first black presidential candidate of a major political party.
“He was fresh-faced, his candidacy was historic and he had a campaign that seemed to transcend politics,” said Robert Lichter, head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. “Reporters are suckers for candidates who don't seem like ordinary politicians.”
This is a classic case of peer culture bias manifesting as political bias. But in the end, readers and viewers don’t give a flying fig why the MSM is biased, only that they are. According to a recent Rasumussen telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters, 51 percent of indys and 84 percent of Repubs said that most reporters have tried to help Barack Obama win the presidency; one in four Dems (24 percent) agreed. This translates to a huge chunk of the electorate, which means we are all being badly served by the Fourth Estate.
Comments