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Study Shows U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush
Mon Mar 14,10:01 AM ET
Top Stories - Reuters
By Claudia Parsons
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush (news - web sites) than Democratic challenger John Kerry (news - web sites), 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 (news - web sites) 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.
THE DEBATE EFFECT
How the Press Covered the Pivotal Period of the 2004 Presidential Campaign
Overview
In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry, according to a new study released today by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
More than half of all Bush stories studied were decidedly negative in tone (1). By contrast, only a quarter of all Kerry stories were clearly negative.
This is the mirror image of what happened four years ago, when then-Governor Bush benefited from coverage in the closing weeks, particularly from the debates, enjoying twice as many positive stories than his rival Vice President Gore (2). Indeed, the percentage of negative Bush coverage is almost identical to the level of negative Gore coverage four years ago.
In both cases, the penchant of the press to focus on internal campaign matters like tactics, strategy, candidate performance and horse race, seem to be a major factor driving the tone of the coverage. This year the President was battered in the coverage particularly for his performance in the first two debates.
There is a difference this year from 2000, however. Kerry coverage has been markedly less negative-and somewhat more positive--than either candidate received during a similar phase in the 2000 race.
The tactical and performance oriented focus of the press has had another effect as well. The coverage this year has been even less likely than four years ago to describe how campaign events directly affected voters--explaining, for example, the possible implications on citizens of candidate's policy proposal.
The study this year also included a new component, blogs, examining five of the most popular. Because they are such a distinct universe, they are not included in any of the overall figures about topic, tone or the rest. However, the examination of blogs reveals that they are conspicuously similar to the mainstream press in what they covered, the tone of that coverage and even in the angle writers took, findings that seem to challenge the idea that the blogosphere is changing the kind of media messages people have access to. Rather than an entirely new citizen-oriented media, what blogs may be doing, this suggests, is furthering the growth of opinion news, but in an even more one-sided form than the cable talk shows.
These are some of the key conclusions of a major new study of press coverage in newspapers, television and on the Internet during two key weeks ending October.
(1)When calculating Tone, coders must quantify all the pertinent text that is positive for the Dominant Candidate, as well as all pertinent text that is negative for the Dominant Candidate. Additional weight is given to text within the headline of the story. In any case where the ratio between positive:negative equals or exceeds 2:1, the story is coded as positive tone for the Dominant Figure. Likewise, when the ratio between positive:negative equals or exceeds 1:2 the story is coded as negative tone for the Dominant Figure. All other stories are coded as neutral. In this study, stories determined to be straight news accounts were not coded for Tone.
(2) PEJ conducted a similar study in the final weeks of the 2000 campaign. Please see, "The Last Lap: How the Press Covered the Final Stages of the Presidential Campaign," October 31, 2000, www.journalism.org.
Kathianne said:Never saw it in msm. I think I'll go look.
musicman said:"Between 1985 and 2004...the number of Americans who felt that news organizations were politically biased rose from 49 per cent to 59 per cent."
Praise be to God - we're LEARNING!
Kathianne said:I doubt that many remember The Chicago Daily News. It was a 'moderate' paper with a balance of liberal and conservative columnists. Had a very good foreign news bureau. Commentary/Opinion was held at the columists/editorial pages.
Chicago Tribune became more like the Daily News when the latter folded. I guess in the progression from conservative towards moderate, it gained momentum and is now vying with the NYTimes for liberal.
Kathianne said:While he was the consumate democrat, he was becoming more conservative the past few years of his life. What a wit and so smart!
Kathianne said:Cites bias:
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050314-102933-3162r.htm
This one cherry picks:
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=21782
This one is pretty good:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6400.shtml
About the study and why:
http://www.journalism.org/who/pej/about.asp
Hard to criticize anyone who does NOTHING except to say that they DO NOTHING.menewa said:I don't know if negative articles demonstrate bias. Bush has simply done a lot more things worthy of criticism than Kerry has...
CSM said:Hard to criticize anyone who does NOTHING except to say that they DO NOTHING.
menewa said:I don't know if negative articles demonstrate bias. Bush has simply done a lot more things worthy of criticism than Kerry has.
As for negative war stories, the press completely rolled over during the buildup to the invasion in Iraq. Scott Ritter made a couple of key appearances, but besides that the press was gung ho about the war, they needed those higher ratings that a war would bring.
Kathianne said:Scott Ritter, OMG. If that is the best you can do, give it up!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/ritter.html
Sir Evil said:Undoubtedly K, some just want to see what they want to see and that's all! No wonder they can lean so far left! :scratch:
