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Fall 2008 Bulletin
Election 2008
Bias or Reality? Media Critics Assess Positive Obama Coverage and Negative McCain Coverage
In the days before the presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008, some media critics suggested the press might be too eager to call the election in favor of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), but others said that coverage reflected reality rather than partisan bias.
In a November 2 column, New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt observed that coverage in his newspaper’s opinion and news sections, as well as in other media outlets, seemed increasingly confident of an Obama win. He quoted an October 18 Times op-ed column by Charles M. Blow that said, “I’ve studied the polls and the electoral map for months, and I no longer believe that John McCain can win,” and cited cover stories in Newsweek and New York magazines that speculated about what an Obama presidency would look like. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asserted in his October 28 column titled, “Journalists name 44th President,” that articles like those in Newsweek and New York showed that “Many pundits and publications seem … certain of a big Democratic win.”
Political correspondent John Dickerson of online magazine Slate observed in a November 2 post that an Obama loss could be considered just as historic as an Obama win because “It would mark the biggest collective error in the history of the media and political establishment.” Dickerson wrote, “an Obama loss would mean the majority of pundits, reporters, and analysts were wrong.”
During the October 23 broadcast of “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” reporter Jeffrey Brown asked Los Angeles Times political campaign reporter Robin Abcarian whether “some in the media have essentially started to treat this race like it’s over,” a concern Abcarian said he shared.
Many critics highlighted studies released in late October 2008 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) which reported that in television, print and online news coverage from September 8 to October 16, 57 percent of overall coverage of the McCain campaign had a “negative tone,” while only 29 percent of Obama coverage was “negative.” Meanwhile, 14 percent of McCain’s coverage was considered “positive” in tone, while 36 percent of Obama coverage was “positive.” The studies are available through the group’s Web site, http://journalism.org/.
PEJ Associate Director Mark Jurkowitz told PBS’ Brown that the data did not necessarily show media bias or a lack of balance. “If a candidate is perceived to be … doing well in polls, if the strategic dynamic of the campaign is favoring him, then he tends to get better coverage,” Jurkowitz said, adding, “the simple message of our report is that: winning begets winning coverage.”
According to Kurtz, journalists say that it would be “a disservice to readers and viewers to ignore, in the name of balance,” polling data that indicated a strong lead for Obama or concerned comments from Republican pundits. Hoyt interviewed Richard Stevenson, The New York Times editor in charge of campaign coverage, for the November 2 column, who said, “There is a great degree of angst now among Republicans about their prospects for president and down the ballot. There is a great degree of optimism among Democrats. That all leads you to a conclusion right now, as a snapshot in time, that Obama is in a better position than McCain is in. That’s the reality, and we’re not going to put our finger on the scale to pretend otherwise.”
John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, editors of the Web site Politico, put it more bluntly in an October 30 post: “As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.”
Slate’s Dickerson told Kurtz that, considering Obama’s gathering strength in key battleground states during the final weeks of the campaign, “we’re not crazy to think it’s all going Obama’s way.” But, Dickerson said, “we’ve seen how this can go horribly wrong when you call the thing too early, and voters find it offensive when journalists skip over the event the voters are supposed to be taking part in.”
Kurtz, along with Hoyt, also pointed out the fallibility of the media relying too much on polls to tell the story of the race. Kurtz said that “as recently as the middle of last December, Hillary Clinton led Obama by 30 points in a Post poll, while Rudy Giuliani was the GOP front-runner.” Polls also led many to predict that Clinton would lose the Jan. 18, 2008 New Hampshire primary, including the Washington Post, which said in a story that day that a loss would leave her campaign “gasping for breath.” Instead, Clinton won, breathing new life into her campaign.
According to Hoyt, The New York Times treated polls “with great and appropriate caution” in regards to the presidential election, citing the expectation that youth and minority voters – groups whose turnouts are notoriously unpredictable on Election Day – would probably play an important role in choosing the new President.
According to Kurtz, veteran pollster John Zogby said “The media still misunderstand and, to a great degree, still misrepresent polls. We don’t predict, can’t predict.” Nevertheless, Kurtz said that on the eve of the 2004 election, Zogby predicted that John Kerry would beat President Bush, a move he now attributes to “hubris and naivete.” After Bush won, Zogby said, “I wasn’t in a fetal position, but I vowed I wouldn’t do that again. And I haven’t.”
– Patrick File
Silha Fellow and Bulletin Editor
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