While the readers of DailyKos, and other Democratic-leaning blogs, probaby said "ho-hum" at the news that the media is biased towards John McCain, the revelation published in the Sunday LA Times is even more stunning when you consider the source of the study, the Center for Media and Public Affairs ("CMPA")
more after the flip.
Here is the meat of the LA Times article from the CMPA:
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.
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.
A link to the rest of the article is here:
http://www.latimes.com/...
The Center for Media & Public Affairs ("CMPA") is a conservative organization that gets almost all of their funding from right-wing sources, including the notorious Richard Mellon Scaife. See the links below for that information:
"Thus, out of the total of $2,960,916 in foundation grants, nearly all of it ($2,668,916) came from just four sources: the John M. Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations. In other words, CMPA received 86% of its foundation funding from those four donors. Here is a sample of other right-wing causes funded by these 3 donors, as listed by their respective SourceWatch articles:
* John M. Olin Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century
* Scaife Foundations - American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation
* Smith Richardson Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute"
http://www.sourcewatch.org/...
Also involved with the CMPA is Wendy Gramm, wife of America’s "other" Dr. Phil, and Ed Meese, the radical-right attorney general from the Reagan years.
http://www.mercatus.org/...
So, the fact that a conservative organization is finding a bias towards the conservative candidate is really the most stunning part of the news. Imagine if a neutral organization engaged in a similar study of bias in the news? Or, how about a more liberal organization like Media Matters?
I remember the CMPA from 2004, where they concluded that the media had a slight bias towards John Kerry over George W. Bush and being stunned by that news. I remember a big headline in my local newspaper, the Hartford Courant, about that pro-Kerry bias.
I wonder if they will follow-up with a similar article in 2008?
I won't hold my breath.