Character and the Primaries of 2008 |
PEWRESEARCH.ORG has an interesting article on how the MSM have treated Obama, Clinton and McCain through the early primaries. They have produced a chart showing the number of positive articles written about each of the three candidates. Conservatives have often been accused by the left as being a bunch of whiners when it comes to our claims of bias towards any conservative Republican. The chart in the article won’t produce any chest-clutching surprises, but I think its still worth a look to have the PEW organization re-confirm what we have long contended.
~~John Cronin~~
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/854/candidate-character
The trajectory of the coverage, however, began to turn against Obama, and did so well before questions surfaced about his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical — and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May.
On the Republican side, John McCain, the candidate who quickly clinched his party’s nomination, has had a harder time controlling his message in the press. Fully 57% of the narratives studied about him were critical in nature, though a look back through 2007 reveals the storyline about the Republican nominee has steadily has steadily improved with time.
