THE GENERAL ELECTION 2008

Foxfyre wrote:

McCain fared far worse

One reason might be that he was heavily attacked from the right. There was more negative coverage from Fox than from CNN or MSNBC, as far as I remember that one study...

Rightwing pundits have been making devastating statements for months. Sample A: Ann Coulter about John McCain...

Ann Coulter wrote:

There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

According to the Pew Center who probably did the most comprehensive analysis, positive/negative was pretty evenly split between Obama and Clinton when they were running against each other.

Press release

Full report

Beginning of the press release summary:

Quote:

Barack Obama did not enjoy more positive press coverage than Hillary Clinton at the height of the primary seasonBut the trajectory of that coverage about Obama got progressively more skeptical, immediately after Clinton herself accused the media of showing preference during a February debate.

Foxfyre wrote:

According to the Pew Center who probably did the most comprehensive analysis, positive/negative was pretty evenly split between Obama and Clinton when they were running against each other.

No, that was the analysis I had in mind (Pew).

sozobe wrote:

Press release

Full report

Beginning of the press release summary:

Quote:

Barack Obama did not enjoy more positive press coverage than Hillary Clinton at the height of the primary seasonBut the trajectory of that coverage about Obama got progressively more skeptical, immediately after Clinton herself accused the media of showing preference during a February debate.

Good point re: McCain's criticism from the right, old europe.

Likewise, you will NOT easily find any detectable bias in Fox News reporting re any candidate. Their editorial/news magazine formats are tilted right and there will be more advocacy for a conservative than a liberal there. I am intentionally leaving out the pundits both on all the left tilting alphabet sources and Fox News, however, and focusing on how the candidates are portrayed in what passes for straight news reporting these days. Fox is mostly fair. Almost everybody else of the MSM isn't.

Fox News

Fox News was the harshest of the three channels on the presumptive Republican nominee. More than half (55%) of the prominent personal statements about McCain were negative, the vast majority of which (49% overall) questioned his conservatism.

In its criticism, Fox News devoted more overall attention to McCain compared with the other cable channels, nearly the same attention it gave the two leading Democrats, 36% for McCain, 37% for Clinton and 39% for Obama. Both CNN and MSNBC, on the other hand, devoted far less of their coverage to the McCain campaign than they did to Clinton's or Obama's.

Fox News was also more positive in its portrayal of Obama's major personal narrative than either McCain or Clinton. Fully 69% of the assertions about Obama personally were positive, a number that rivals what he received on MSNBC (70%).

Fox News did offer more positive than negative assertions about Clinton, but less so than the other channels (54% positive versus 70% on CNN and 72% on MSNBC). In particular, Fox News gave more attention to the image of Clinton as unlikable and divisive than either of the other networks, (22% versus 13% on CNN and only 4% on MSNBC).

I am more interested in the overall coverage that will have the most effect:

ANALYSIS: JOURNALISM.ORG

Talk Radio

In talk radio, the campaign was also a major focus. In the five talk radio shows tracked as part of PEJ's News Coverage Index, more than two-thirds (67%) of the airtime was devoted to the race. Clinton was the biggest focus of attention. Fully 37% of the campaign segments including her as a significant figure, followed by Obama at 30% of the segments and McCain at 23%.

While McCain got the least amount of attention on talk radio, he also got the most negative attention when it came to the personal narrative themes about him. Only 19% of the assertions about McCain personally were positive in nature while 81% were negative. By far, the biggest topic of conversation for McCain was the question of whether he was a true conservative politician. Fully 69% of the assertions about McCain, and 73% from the three conservative talk show hosts included in our sample, were supporting the notion that McCain was not a true conservative. From the conservative talk show hosts, only 16% of assertions about McCain were positive. Liberal radio talk show hosts, by contrast, barely paid attention to McCain during this time period; only 12% of campaign segments including McCain in any meaningful way.

One major reason for the amount of negative coverage about McCain on conservative talk radio was the doubts about his ideological credentials. Top-rated hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity made McCain a key target during the Republican primary season. They argued that such candidates as Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney were genuine conservatives while McCain was a maverick and the candidate of the mainstream, or as Limbaugh calls them, the "drive-by" media.

If McCain was given a hard time from talk radio, so was Hillary Clinton. Thirty percent of the assertions about her suggested that she lacked core beliefs or was too politically calculating. (This included 16% of the assertions on the two liberal radio shows we tracked and 38% of the assertions on conservative talk radio.) Overall, only 25% of the assertions on conservative talk radio about Clinton were positive compared to a much higher 55% on liberal talk radio.

Obama found himself with much more support on talk radio, both for liberals and conservatives alike. Among liberal talkers, 67% of the assertions were postive. Conservative talkers, who would seem to oppose the Democratic senator's campaign, also gave Obama more positive assertions (55%) than negative ones (45%). That was a rate more than three times higher than they gave the Republican front-runner McCain. The motives here are impossible to divine, but one obvious possibility is that a desire among conservative talk hosts to defeat a familiar antagonist in Clinton made Obama seem more attractive.

"Personal statements' from the media is not objective reporting.

The primaries are over. We are now into the general election.

Because Soz directed the conversation to media coverage during the primaries. Try to keep up dear.

What news coverage McCain received during the primaries is relevant to news coverage during the primaries. It is NOT RELEVANT to a disparity in news coverage between McCain and Obama in the general election. Just to clear that up.

The question was too dumb to dignify with a response.