Anyone who's a Kos regular has noticed the media's anti-Obama bias. It's been pointed out in diary after diary since the end of the dem primaries.
Now, there's definitive proof ... and, it's not just a little bit of anti-Obama bias.
Read below for the details.
The LA Times story is here: http://www.latimes.com/...
The gist of the story and results of the study are found in blockquote below.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.
During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.
The group used a fairly rigorous method to rate comments about Obama or McCain as positive or negative.
The center reviews and "codes" statements on the evening news as positive or negative toward the candidates. For example, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell said in June that Obama "has problems" with white men and suburban women, the media center deemed that a negative.
The positive and negative remarks about each candidate are then totaled to calculate the percentages that cut for and against them.
Visual images and other more subjective cues are not assessed. But the tracking applies a measure of analytical rigor to a field rife with seat-of-the-pants fulminations.
The media center's most recent batch of data covers nightly newscasts beginning June 8, the day after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination, ushering in the start of the general-election campaign. The data ran through Monday, as Obama began his overseas trip.
So, let's hope this study gets broadcasted. Who knows maybe it will even change the reporting a little bit. Well, probably not ... the MSM wanting it to be down to the wire and all.
Note - the head of the group that conducted this study had appeared on FOX during the 2006 election season when a pro-dem bias was found in that period. Think FOX will talk about this study?
KO will pick it up though.
This study will help us a little in being armed and ready for the onslaughts to come. As a commenter noted, if this entire week were part of the study it would have been higher than 72% negative commentary on Obama.