I haven't seen much discussion of this item here, and I think it should be noticed. Apologies if this is already old news.
One of Hillary Clinton's, and now John McCain's, tactics to rile up their supporters is to decry overwhelming media bias. Bill Clinton sure has weighed in on the issue, going so far as to claim a "cover-up".
But there's evidence now to the contrary.
As reported in the NY Times Caucus blog yesterday:
Coverage of Obama Becomes Less Positive, Study Shows
The story is about a joint study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Its main point is that media coverage of Barack Obama has actually grown increasingly negative over the last several months.
The relatively positive press coverage that Senator Barack Obama enjoyed early in the campaign began to turn negative later in the primary season... The study, which focused on how the press has covered the candidates’ personal narratives, also challenged the notion that Mr. Obama received more positive coverage than his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The full report can be found here. The opening says it all:
If campaigns for president are in part a battle for control of the master narrative about character, Democrat Barack Obama has not enjoyed a better ride in the press than rival Hillary Clinton, according to a new study of primary coverage by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns.
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.
This last desperate refuge should not be allowed in Clinton's or McCain's arguments any longer.