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Washington Post 'Fesses Up: Obama Gets More Coverage (But They're Not Alone)
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by PEP | August 18, 2008 at 09:03 am
437 views | 25 Recommendations | 8 comments
At long last, some members of the media are starting to look at the Barack Obama celebrity phenomenon, and evaluate how he's been covered vs. other candidates. The results, including one comprehensive study noted in this article, are clear: the media loves Obama and features him over John McCain and other candidates.
Others, though, say numbers don't mean anything.
Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain -- and therefore there's more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good.
In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates' agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan.
This dovetails with Obama's dominance in photos, which I pointed out two weeks ago. At that time, it was 122 for Obama and 78 for McCain. Two weeks later, it's 143 to 100, almost the same gap, because editors have run almost the same number of photos -- 21 of Obama and 22 of McCain -- since they realized the disparity. McCain is almost even with Obama in Page 1 photos -- 10 to 9.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (8)
at 10:45 on August 18th, 2008
PEP, I like this story. It's good stuff.
Are they no Rules or Laws in place that each Party has get equal coverage in the Media?
In some Countries it is a Law, that all Parties Running get equal coverage or Air Time!
at 12:23 on August 18th, 2008
PEP, I like this story. It's good stuff.
Not surprising but definitely a good find PEP. I wonder how much of a difference this will make come election time?
at 12:25 on August 18th, 2008
I would be very wary of letting the government decide how much coverage candidates should or shouldn't get. We live in a free country and as such companies can do with their product what they want. Anyways, I think the market is deciding based on the falling subscription rate that many papers are experiencing.
at 14:47 on August 18th, 2008
Of course, if key points of the article are left out, it is easier to make other key points.
at 15:17 on August 18th, 2008
You're right. I guess I could go with the "any news is good news" cliche right now. But I think a better answer would be to just look at what happened when Senator McCain tried to get one of his opinion pieces published in the New York Times. Even though the NY Times had just published a piece from Senator Obama they didn't publish McCain's piece.
And the favorable coverage thing has to go both ways. I'm sure that not all the front page stories about McCain were puff pieces for the senator.
There's also the fact that the three major anchors followed Obama all over the world on his recent foreign trip while they didn't do the same thing for McCain.
at 15:44 on August 18th, 2008
Obama probably gets more media coverage, but I disagree that the Times case can be construed as any kind of censorship. McCain's opinion piece was rejected because it revealed no new information and devoted little attention to policy proposals. The Times, which has published seven better OpEd pieces by McCain over the years, encouraged McCain to resubmit his piece.
Source: thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
at 17:06 on August 18th, 2008
PEP, I like this story. It's good stuff.
A good find - I hadn't heard about this.
at 20:21 on August 20th, 2008
Good discussion, ya'll. Thanks for all that and the flags.
BigT, I think it's already made a difference--Hillary was rudely elbowed aside by an in love media that also was all too happy to find some man to favor. The fact that it was a liberal black guy just really put the whipped cream on the sundae for the leftist media--which, BTW, really does not support gender equality in action as much as they talk about.