Media Coverage Biased?

McCain May Think So

By Jessica Caswell

We’ve seen the ads, the debates and the money being poured into this presidential election but, what do you think about how the candidates have been treated by the media?

Well, it seems that presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain hasn’t received fair and balanced coverage from the evening news.

According to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, Sen. Barack Obama has the lead in the fight to get good press from the news networks.

This isn’t much of a surprise now that election season is coming to end. These days it seems if you say you’re a Republican, you might as well get ready for a look of disbelief.

Maybe the media has something to do with it because the data from this study sure swings in favor of Obama.

The study is calling it, “Obamamania” and is saying since the Democrat and Republican conventions, the evening newscasts of NBC, CBS and ABC have had 65 percent more positive comments about Obama.

For McCain the positive comments aren’t coming as easily. The study shows that McCain has received a much less 36 percent in positive comments from the same networks.

The study came from 585 election news stories that aired from Aug. 23 to Sept. 30. It included: ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and the first half hour of FOX Special Report.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s numbers aren’t much better than her running mate’s numbers. Comments about her have been only 42 percent positive.

“For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain,” said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center to the Associated Press. “If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama.”

But, surprise surprise, the study found a difference in the way that FOX covers the race for the White House.

Obama’s coverage from the biased news channel has been only 28 percent positive in contrast to McCain’s 38 percent positive coverage.

Palin got positive comments from FOX almost half of the time the study says.

So, where you get your news is definitely a big indicator of where you stand on partisan issues.

According to a study released by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 52 percent of people who got their news from FOX News Channel said they are Republican, 17 percent are Democrats and 30 percent identify themselves as Independents.

But, regardless of where you get your news, all the major network news stations will be setup to give minute by minute election coverage.

ABC will be broadcasting from Times Square, while NBC will be in Rockefeller Plaza covering the results.

FOX News Channel is scheduled to debut its new High Definition studio on election night and Katie Couric will be hosting election coverage for CBS in New York City.

So with all those studies, all the news coverage and all the hard work put into both of these campaigns the only good news and its 100 percent sure, is that we have only 78 more days of President Bush in office.