TIME MAG PUTS OBAMA ON COVER -- FOR 7TH TIME IN A YEAR!
[MCCAIN HAS BEEN ON COVER TWICE]
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ABC, CBS, and NBC all waited for weeks to touch the emerging story of the adultery of John Edwards as the National Enquirer nailed down the story. None even breathed the name of Edwards until he decided to confess. But when the New York Times used far weaker editorial standards than the Enquirer, reporting on February 21 that there might be adultery between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, citing hearsay from unnamed former McCain aides who were "convinced the relationship had become romantic," all three networks leaped on the story.
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For the fourth straight weekday as Barack Obama vacations, he received better coverage on the broadcast network evening shows than the non-vacationing John McCain. Without fresh video of Obama, the CBS Evening News came up with a new way to tout Obama's campaign as they compared the Web sites of the two candidates and declared Obama's far superior. Reporter Daniel Sieberg asserted "McCain's Web site is still playing catch up to Obama's use of cyberspace." Turning to "Web design expert Doug Jaeger," Sieberg echoed Joe Biden in applying the term "clean" to Obama as he highlighted how "Jaeger describes Obama's site as clean; and McCain's as cluttered." Jaeger complained about JohnMcCain.com: "He's using lots of different typefaces at all different sizes which gives you a feeling of chaos."
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- The three broadcast networks treated Obama to nearly seven times more good press than bad — 462 positive stories (34% of the total), compared with only 70 stories (just 5%) that were critical.
- NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports (37%), more than ten times the number of anti-Obama stories (17, or 3%). The CBS Evening News was nearly as skewed, with 156 stories spun in favor of Obama (38%), compared to a mere 21 anti-Obama reports (5%). ABC's World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama's favor (127 stories to 32, or 27% to 7%).
- Barack Obama received his best press when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene. All of the networks lavished him with praise when he was keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama (out of 81 total reports) prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.
- The networks downplayed or ignored major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama's relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in just 15 other stories. CBS and NBC also initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama's longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright, but heavily praised Obama's March 18 speech on race relations.
- While Obama's worst media coverage came during the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, even then the networks offered two positive stories for every one that carried a negative spin (21% to 9%). Obama's best press of the year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6 — after that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just one percent that were critical.
- The networks minimized Obama's liberal ideology, only referring to him as a "liberal" 14 times in four years. In contrast, reporters found twice as many occasions (29) to refer to Obama as either a "rock star," "rising star" or "superstar" during the same period.
- In covering the campaign, network reporters highlighted voters who offered favorable opinions about Obama. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78%) were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 (19%) that had a negative view, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.
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Senator John McCain's trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the "in other political news" portion of his newscast.
But when Obama heads for Iraq and other locations overseas this summer, Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Obama on successive nights.
And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama's first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.
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The center found that the network shows broadcast only 169 jokes about Obama, compared with 428 about Bush. McCain drew 328 jokes. Hillary Clinton, who dropped out of the presidential race and much political news in early June, still drew more than twice as many attempted yuk lines (382) as Obama. [...]
Combining the laugh lines from all five shows, Bush was the ...
... most mocked, with 605; Clinton had 562; McCain got 549; and Obama trailed, with 382.
Letterman had the most fun at Clinton's expense, with 146 jokes about her and only 46 about Obama. Leno had the most Bush jokes (208), with Clinton right behind at 204.
Colbert worked McCain over the most, with 129 jokes, compared with 91 for Obama and 79 on Clinton. An example: "It's time the media started trumpeting McCain's exciting story. He's old, and no one likes him."
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This is nothing new, take for instance a study years ago gun control stories on the big-three:
