The "in the tank for Nobama" media?
http://www.mrc.org/SpecialReports/2008/obama/obama.asp
On August 28, when the junior Senator from Illinois accepts his party’s
nomination to be the next President of the United States, Barack Obama
may wish to spend a few moments thanking network news reporters for
making the whole night possible. Since the launch of Obama’s national
political career at the Democratic convention four years ago, the Big
Three broadcast networks have showered Obama with positive — even
glowing — news coverage, protected the candidate from the attacks of his
rivals, and shown little interest in investigating Obama’s past
associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened
his campaign.
These are the key findings of an exhaustive analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC
evening news coverage of Barack Obama — every story, every soundbite,
every mention — through the end of the Democratic primaries in June.
Media Research Center analysts examined every reference to Obama on the
three evening broadcasts, and found a near-absence of the journalistic
scrutiny and skepticism normally associated with coverage of national
politicians. Indeed, much of the coverage — particularly prior to the
formal start of Obama’s presidential campaign in early 2007 — bordered
on giddy celebration of a rising political "rock star" rather than
objective newsgathering.
That the national media have unfairly tipped the scales in Obama’s
direction is a fact not lost on the public. The Pew Research Center
surveyed about 1,000 adults in late May, and reported that "far more
Americans believe that the press coverage has favored Barack Obama than
think it has favored Hillary Clinton," with even 35 percent of Democrats
seeing "a pro-Obama bias." A Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely voters
released July 21 discovered "49 percent of voters believe that in the
general election, most reporters will try to help Obama with their
coverage" while "just one voter in four (24%%) believes that most
reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage."
And a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters released
July 24 discovered six times as many think "most members of the media"
want Obama to win rather than McCain. According to an article posted on
FoxNews.com, "Only about 1 in 10 (11 percent) volunteers the belief that
the media is neutral on the race to become the 44th President of the
United States....When asked to rate the objectivity of media coverage of
the campaigns, Americans feel Obama gets more of a positive spin by a
better than 7-to-1 margin (46 percent more positive toward Obama; 6
percent more positive toward McCain)."
The public believes the media are tilted towards Obama because of the
biased performance they witnessed during this year’s primaries. NBC News
correspondent Lee Cowan, the reporter assigned to cover the Obama
campaign full time during the primaries, admitted in an interview in
early January that he felt pulled in Obama’s direction: "From a
reporter’s point of view, it’s almost hard to remain objective because
it’s infectious, the energy, I think. It sort of goes against your core
to say that as a reporter, but the crowds have gotten so much bigger,
his energy has gotten stronger. He feeds off that."
Weeks later, Cowan told the New York Times’ Jacques Steinberg that it
was "hard not to drink the Kool-Aid" surrounding Obama: "Even in the
conversations we have as colleagues, there is a sense of trying
especially hard not to drink the Kool-Aid. It’s so rapturous, everything
around him. All these huge rallies."
On CNN’s Reliable Sources on January 13, Washington Post media writer
Howard Kurtz asked a former Washington Post editor, The Politico’s John
Harris, whether he thought "journalists are rooting for the Obama
story." Harris referred back to his time at the Post: "A couple years
ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they
needed to go through detox when they came back — ‘Oh, he’s so
impressive, he’s so charismatic,’ and we’re kind of like, ‘Down, boy.’"
Anchoring news coverage of Democratic primaries on February 12, MSNBC’s
Chris Matthews famously confessed after listening to an Obama victory
speech, "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that
too often."
To assess the degree to which journalists’ infatuation with Obama
contaminated daily news coverage, MRC analysts used our own News
Tracking System (NTS) software and Nexis to locate every story
mentioning Obama on ABC’s World News, the CBS Evening News and NBC
Nightly News from the time Obama emerged on the national stage (the
first evening news story mentioning Obama aired on May 17, 2000) through
June 6, 2008, the last broadcast before Hillary Clinton formally exited
the Democratic race, cementing Obama’s nomination.
The three evening news broadcasts may not be able to tout the high
ratings of a generation ago, but together averaged more than 23 million
combined viewers from January through early June of this year, far more
than their cable news competitors. And unlike the news junkies who flock
to the 24/7 cable outlets, the typical broadcast evening news viewer
spends less of their day devouring campaign news, which makes them
consequently more likely to be influenced by the information and images
they receive from these programs.
Analysts found a total of 1,365 news stories and interviews offering at
least some discussion of Obama. About two-fifths of these (550) were
full reports that focused exclusively, or nearly so, on Obama. Another
170 items (about 12%% of the total) were brief, anchor-read items that
also focused on Obama. Just under half of the total (645, or 47%%) were
full reports or interviews that included either mentions of or
soundbites from Obama, but did not focus on him. Examples of stories
included in this group are: items about the congressional debate over
Iraq in early 2007 which quoted Obama along with many other senators;
stories about candidate debates where Obama was one talking head among
many; or stories about any of his Democratic (or Republican) rivals
which included some comments directed at Obama himself. These stories,
about 30 percent of which conveyed a distinctly positive or negative
spin about the candidate (more about how we determined a story’s spin
shortly), were included in the sample to ensure a complete portrait of
network news coverage of Obama.
NBC and ABC aired the most total stories (490 and 464 respectively),
with the CBS Evening News a fairly distant third with 411 stories. As
far as stories that focused mainly on Obama, ABC (194) and NBC (198)
were practically tied, with CBS again lagging (158 stories). The NBC
Nightly News aired the most stories with minor discussion of Obama
(249), followed by ABC’s World News (222) and CBS (174). The remainder
were brief items read by the news anchor; the CBS Evening News — which
had a regular "Campaign Notebook" segment of short items — aired the
most such stories (74), followed by ABC (48) and NBC (43).
