Yet another study shows that media coverage has favored Obama:
Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
ABC’s “World News” had more balance than NBC’s “Nightly News” or the “CBS Evening News,” the group said. Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn’t evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.
“For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain,” said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. “If you watch the evening news, you’d think you should vote for Obama.” . . .
ABC recorded 57 percent favorable comments toward the Democrats, and 42 percent positive for the Republicans. NBC had 56 percent positive for the Democrats, 16 percent for the Republicans. CBS had 73 percent positive (Obama), versus 31 percent (McCain).
Hume’s telecast had 39 percent favorable comments for McCain and 28 percent positive for the Democratic ticket.
It was the second study in two weeks to remark upon negative coverage for the McCain-Palin ticket. The Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded last week that McCain’s coverage has been overwhelmingly negative since the conventions ended, while Obama’s has been more mixed.
(Via Instapundit.)
That’s 65% positive for Obama, versus 31% positive for McCain. The Pew study that the article alludes to came up with different absolute numbers (presumably due to differences in methodology) but agreed that the media is biased more than 2-to-1 in favor of Obama, finding 36% positive for Obama versus 16% positive for McCain.
It’s also interesting that the network-specific results align perfectly with the Groseclose-Milyo measure, with CBS furthest left, then NBC, then ABC, then Fox.
AFTERTHOUGHT: In all seriousness, I suppose we ought to congratulate ABC. Despite being only slightly more ideologically moderate than NBC (according to Groseclose-Milyo), ABC managed to be much more fair, with a 15-point Obama bias compared to NBC’s 40-point bias. (Suggested slogan: “ABC News: less unfair than you’d expect!”)
Fox News did better still. Despite being only slightly closer to center than ABC (on the other side, of course), they managed a mere 11-point McCain bias.
UPDATE: The Pew study covered only newspapers and cable news, while this study covered only the evening news on the broadcast networks and Fox. Thus, their data sets were almost disjoint (intersecting only on Brit Hume), which is probably the primary explanation for the difference in absolute numbers. Also, since the newspapers are generally more ideologically liberal than the networks (other than CBS), it explains why Pew found even more bias than this study.
Internet Scofflaw 