Sarah Palin screws up yet again at her latest publicity stunt - the National Tea Party Convention - and blames the "liberal media." On tonight's show in his talking points segment, Bill O'Reilly also called out the "left-wing media" for attacking Sarah Palin after her speech on Saturday. He goes on to cite research in which he claims the mainstream media has only had two positive mentions of the tea party movement among thousands of analyzed articles. Well I've got news for Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly, crying "liberal bias" when it's convenient doesn't actually constitute one. I've got a news analysis of my own that they conveniently left out to prove it.
Sarah Palin screws up yet again at her latest publicity stunt - the National Tea Party Convention - and blames the "liberal media." On tonight's show in his talking points segment, Bill O'Reilly also called out the "left-wing media" for attacking Sarah Palin after her speech on Saturday. He goes on to cite research in which he claims the mainstream media has only had two positive mentions of the tea party movement among thousands of analyzed articles. Well I've got news for Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly, crying "liberal bias" when it's convenient doesn't actually constitute one. I've got a news analysis of my own that they conveniently left out to prove it.
First off, I'd be very curious to see exactly what news outlets this "research" included, what exactly was deemed a positive response, as well as how many neutral and negative stories were recorded. My point is, they had not problem with the "liberal media" was trumpeting the Republican framing of the health care debate.
In my own content analysis of the health care debate from July 14 (the say America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, H.R. 3200 was introduced) to August 25th. I examined 151 New York Times and Washington Post articles whose main focus was the health care debate. I found that 30% of those articles mentioned the expansion of the scope of government while 58% of those stories were negative. Another 10% of the articles focused on a concern for a delay of care and 68% of those were negative. Lastly, 61% of articles focused focused on the partisan divide and 78% of those were critical of the health care debate.
In this case, the "liberal media" seemed to be overwhelmingly supportive of the Republican frame. Isnt' it convenient that Fox News would pass up the opportunity to do a news analysis back then? The reason the tea party movement is getting so-called negative coverage has more to do with the fact that the mainstream media is predicated on covering conflict. If anything, the media have a "conflict bias." You would think after all these years on television Bill would know that. I guess it just didn't benefit him or his viewers to phrase it that way.