Media Bias Favors Obama

Original Link: http://www.alphecca.com/?p=864

By Jeff Soyer

I’ve pretty much sworn off of TV news these days as major media such as NBC, CBS, and ABC continue to give Obama far more — and more favorable — coverage. Any stories about McCain usually come as a brief afterthought and generally consist of him criticizing Obama or otherwise appearing in a negative way. Looks like it isn’t just my imagination:

For each of the weeks between June 9 and July 13, Obama had a much more significant media presence. The Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates more than 300 political stories each week in newspapers, magazines and television to measure whether each candidate is talked about in more than 25 percent of the stories.

Every week, Obama played an important role in more than two-thirds of the stories. For July 7-13, for example, Obama was a significant presence in 77 percent of the stories, while McCain was in 48 percent, the PEJ said.

Sure, there are some weeks Obama’s going to make more news, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director.

But every week?

“No matter how understandable it is given the newness of the candidate and the historical nature of Obama’s candidacy, in the end it’s probably not fair to McCain,” he said.

The Democrat has proven an attractive commodity; TV debates involving Democrats this campaign consistently drew more viewers than the Republicans. A Time magazine cover with Obama in 2006 was the second-best-selling of the year, and a Men’s Vogue cover outsold every issue but the debut, according to circulation figures reported by Portfolio.com. Newsweek has done six covers with Obama over the past year, two with McCain. A Rolling Stone cover with Obama stopped just short of adding a halo.

At this point, I generally rely on the Internet for all of my news. That way I can pick-and-choose my sources and yes, I even try to read some stories from “the left” to give myself some balance, or at least to see what the left is thinking.