Duh!! McCain Coverage Mostly Negative

[thcbongman]

Study: McCain coverage mostly negative - Yahoo! News

Anyone one bit surprised?

Keypoints in the article:

"Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain from the conventions through the final presidential debate were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negativeâ??the least favorable coverage of any of the 4 candidates on the ticket.

The study, by The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, a non-partisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.


â??Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments,â?� the study found. â??In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might best be described as a drama in which John McCain acted and Barack Obama reacted.â?�"

Coverage of Palin, the study found, went from â??quite positiveâ?� to â??very negativeâ?� to â??more mixed.â?� Overall, the six-week breakdown showed 29 percent positive, 39 percent negative, and 33 percent neutral.

While Biden has received far less coverage that the other three candidates, the study found the stories about him were â??far more negative than Palinâ??s, and nearly as negative as McCainâ??s.â?�

thcbongman Reviewed by thcbongman on 10-22-2008. Duh!! McCain Coverage Mostly Negative Study: McCain coverage mostly negative - Yahoo! News Anyone one bit surprised? Keypoints in the article: Rating: 5

[justanotherbozo]

Study: McCain coverage mostly negative - Yahoo! News

Anyone one bit surprised?

Keypoints in the article:

not surprised in the least, the mainstream media wants Obama

[dragonrider]

I pasted in the full text of the article below so we don't have to judge it just based on the "Keypoints."

I'm not sure I get exactly what they are calling negative coverage. It's not clear to me that they are tallking about a true bias here, or just a story that reflects poorly on a candidate. For example, if a story says McCain slipped in the polls or is losing ground in the electoral map, is that negative because it reflects poorly on McCain? They do not do a very good job of explaing this.

It says:

"Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments,â?� the study found.

To me that means that McCain did something that had a negative effect or was considered to be negative, not that the COVERAGE of the action was itself biased in a negative way.

It's McCain's own fault if he generate bad press by doing things that hurt him or are seen in a negaitve light, not the press's fault for reporting it.

Here's the article:


Study: McCain coverage mostly negative

The good news for John McCain? He's now receiving as much attention from the national media as his Democratic rival. The bad news? Itâ??s overwhelmingly negative.

Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative â?? the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets.

The study, by The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.

"Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments,â?� the study found. â??In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might best be described as a drama in which John McCain acted and Barack Obama reacted.â?�

Indeed, the increased and increasingly negative media attention for McCain isnâ??t surprising when looking at how the campaignâ??s strategy changed since the beginning of the general election.

â??We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us,â?� spokesman Brian Rogers told Politico last month, adding later that â??we intend to stay on offense.â?�

For Barack Obama, the study found coverage â??has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so," with 36 percent of the storiees positive in tone, 35 percent mixed, and 29 percent negative.

So do these numbers reveal a pro-Obama bias? Not necessarily, according to the studyâ??s authors.

Rather, they say, the statistics â??do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions.â?�

While McCain left St. Paul, Minn., with mostly positive coverage, Obama started out the same period with mostly negative press. But as things turned in the polls, and especially in articles about detailing the electoral map, Obamaâ??s coverage became more favorable.

Obamaâ??s numbers, in fact, are in line with past presidential candidates around the same time periods in the 2000 and 2004 races. Itâ??s McCainâ??s coverage that has been extraordinarily negative in tone.

On the vice presidential side, Sarah Palin received three times as much attention as Joe Biden, though the two candidates atop each ticket are again receiving far more attention than their running mate as the campaign has moved into the home stretch.

Coverage of Palin, the study found, went from â??quite positiveâ?� to â??very negativeâ?� to â??more mixed.â?� Overall, the six-week breakdown showed 29 percent positive, 39 percent negative and 33 percent neutral.

While Biden has received far less coverage that the other three candidates, the study found the stories about him were â??far more negative than Palinâ??s, and nearly as negative as McCainâ??s.â?�

In examining tone, the projectâ??s authors wrote that they took a â??cautious and conservative approach,â?� only judging a story positive or negative if the slant was very clear.

[eg420ne]

not surprised in the least, the mainstream media wants Obama

No. i've have heard that the media will benefit from the McCain then from Obama..
thats whats been said

[thcbongman]

Certainly it's McCain's fault for most of the negative press, especially since he started with positive press coverage. However it's quite obvious the press coverage favors Obama over McCain. It's not like Obama has most of the positive coverage, his coverage is quite mixed, which reflects basically the truth. A lot of people love Obama and a lot of people hate him.

To explain what they deem negative coverage I taken the data analysis directly from Pew Research Center Project For Excellent In Journalism. It's a really interesting analysis, it's quite long but quite a read, it identifies the various economic events of where negative coverage of McCain was especially evidence, during the economic crisis and when it relates to the style of his campagin.

Press Takes a Harder Look at Obama�and Itself | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

Among the findings:

Coverage of Obama began in the negative after the conventions, but the tone switched with the changing direction of the polls. The most positive stories about him were those that were most politicalâ??the ones focused on polling, the electoral map, and tactics.
For McCain, coverage began positively, but turned sharply negative with McCainâ??s reaction to the crisis in the financial markets. As he took increasingly bolder steps to try and reverse the direction of the polls, the coverage only worsened. Attempts to turn the dialogue away from the economy through attacks on Obamaâ??s character did hurt Obamaâ??s media coverage, but McCainâ??s was even more negative.
Coverage of Palin, in the end, was more negative than positive. In all, 39% of Palin stories carried a negative tone, while 28% were positive, and 33% were neutral. Contrary to what some suggested, little of the coverage was about Palinâ??s personal life (5%).
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was nearly the invisible man. His had just one large moment, the vice presidential debate, which also offered his only positive or neutral contribution. Aside from that week, the limited coverage he did receive was far more negative than Palinâ??s, and nearly as negative as McCainâ??s.
The economy was hardly a singular lens through which the media perceived the race. Though it was the No. 1 campaign topic overall, five out of the six weeks other topics were bigger, and in the end it accounted for not much more of the campaign newshole (18%) than assessments of the candidates in the four debates (17%).
Horse race reporting, once again, made up the majority of coverage, but less so than earlier in the contest or than in previous elections. Since the conventions ended, 53% of the newshole studied has focused on political matters, particularly tactics, strategy and polling. That is more than twice as much as the coverage focused on policy (20%). This focus on tactics and horse race grew in the last three weeks as both campaigns became more negative in their rhetoric.
Tone is an elusive and yet unavoidable question when examining the role of the news media. Who got better coverage, and why?

To examine tone, the Project takes a particularly cautious and conservative approach. Unlike some researchers, we examine not just whether assertions in stories are positive or negative, but also whether they are inherently neutral. This, we believe, provides a much clearer and fairer sense of the tone of coverage than ignoring those balanced or mixed evaluations. Second, we do not simply tally up all the evaluative assertions in stories and compile them into a single pile to measure. Journalists and audiences think about press coverage in stories or segments. They ask themselves, is this story positive or negative or neutral? Hence the Project measures coverage by story, and for a story to be deemed as having a negative or positive tone, it must be clearly so, not a close call: for example, the negative assertions in a story must outweigh positive assertions by a margin of at least 1.5 to 1 for that story to be deemed negative.

One question likely to be posed is whether these findings provide evidence that the news media are pro-Obama. Is there some element in these numbers that reflects a rooting by journalists for Obama and against McCain, unconscious or otherwise? The data do not provide conclusive answers. They do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions. Obamaâ??s coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well. Nor are these numbers different than what we have seen before. Obamaâ??s numbers are similar to what we saw for John Kerry four years ago as he began rising in the polls, and McCainâ??s numbers are almost identical to what we saw eight years ago for Democrat Al Gore.

What the findings also reveal is the reinforcingâ??rather than press-generatedâ??effects of media. We see a repeating pattern here in which the press first offers a stenographic account of candidate rhetoric and behavior, while also on the watch for misstatements and gaffes. Then, in a secondary reaction, it measures the political impact of what it has reported. This is magnified in particular during presidential races by the prevalence of polling and especially daily tracking. While this echo effect exists in all press coverage, it is far more intense in presidential elections, with the explosion of daily tracking polls, state polls, poll aggregation sites and the 24-hour cable debate over their implications. Even coverage of the candidateâ??s policy positions and rhetoric, our reading of these stories suggest, was tied to horse race and took on its cast.