www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/03/14/study_shows_us_election_coverage_harder_on_bush_1110813118/

Study Shows U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush

By Claudia Parsons  |  March 14, 2005

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.

The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The study looked at 16 newspapers of varying size across the country, four nightly newscasts, three network morning news shows, nine cable programs and nine Web sites through the course of 2004.

Examining the public perception that coverage of the war in Iraq was decidedly negative, it found evidence did not support that conclusion. The majority of stories had no decided tone, 25 percent were negative and 20 percent were positive, it said.

The three network nightly newscasts and public broadcaster PBS tended to be more negative than positive, while Fox News was twice as likely to be positive as negative.

Looking at public perceptions of the media, the report showed that more people thought the media was unfair to both Kerry and Bush than to the candidates four years earlier, but fewer people thought news organizations had too much influence on the outcome of the election.

"It may be that the expectations of the press have sunk enough that they will not sink much further. People are not dismayed by disappointments in the press. They expect them," the authors of the report said.

The study noted a huge rise in audiences for Internet news, particularly for bloggers whose readers jumped by 58 percent in six months to 32 million people.

Despite the growing importance of the Web, the report said investment was not keeping pace and some 62 percent of Internet professionals reported cutbacks in the newsroom in the last three years, even more than the 37 percent of print, radio and TV journalists who cited cutbacks in their newsrooms.

"For all that the number of outlets has grown, the number of people engaged in collecting original information has not," the report said, noting that much of the investment was directed at repackaging and presenting information rather than gathering news.

[sarcasm]No, really?[/sarcasm]

They needed a STUDY to show this?


Hey Airwolf! LOVE that graphic! Never seen it before! Took me a second or two to figure it out.

"People are not dismayed by disappointments in the press. They expect them," the authors of the report said."

Couldnt't have said it better myself.

Surprise...surprise.

And the demoRATs still lost.

Asshats.

I'M STUNNED

Color me surprised.

It must really piss off Dan Rather & his cohorts that they couldn't turn the election.

MAybe Rush is wrong & the leftist media doesn't have power anymore.

Should that surprise anyone on this board? The news media doesn't believe it, but they lost most of their credibility among the people, so what is left? zero, nada, zip. Many of them don't believe that they are the butt of jokes among the people, and I guess when you say you're unbiased etc, but in actually you do have an agenda......

And by this we should be surprised?

Where has this guy been since before the election, locked in a steel box in Mexico?

That can't be true.  According to Bill O'Reilly the media bias is on both sides and doesn't lean toward the left.  At least that is what he was saying lately when people were blasting Dan Rather for being a left leaning reporter.  Of course I don't agree with anything Bill has to say including this.  But if Fox News says there is equal bias...then it must be true.  

Quoted:
They needed a STUDY to show this?

NFW!

Who is Kerry?????










Sorry I will stop now.

FREE

Well go figure.........

Quoted: MAybe Rush is wrong & the leftist media doesn't have power anymore.

Uhh . . . that would make him right.

Evan Thomas of Newsweek estimated that the media's bias towards Democrats was worth about 15 points for John Kerry.  The editor of ABC news in a memo explicitly told his staff to be tougher on the incumbent, because this election is important and reporters have a responisbility and duty.  There was another study comparing news coverage of the 2004 race against past ones; John Kerry was the most favorably covered candidate in at least 24 years.  Bush was the most negatively covered.

This is why I knew Bush was going to win, back in August.  It was breathtaking how much crap was being heaped on Bush from the media, Hollywood, foreign leaders, activists, the war, you name it.........and he was still neck and neck in the polls with Kerry.  If that was everything they had (and it was), then Bush didn't have much to worry about.  If it wasn't for those debates, he would have sailed to an easy victory.  He still did pretty well.

I am jack's complete lack of surprise.

Quoted: members.cox.net/_themacallan/Bush_BiasBook.jpg

 That was awesome when President Bush did that