Los Angeles Times' report on ABC, NBC, CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain, a think tank finds..
ON THE MEDIA In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias Cable talking
heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias -- but a think tank
finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John
McCain in recent weeks. By JAMES RAINEY, ON THE MEDIA
July 27, 2008 Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of
conventional wisdom last week.
Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.
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Such pronouncements, sorry to say, tend to be wrong since they describe
a monolithic media that no longer exists. Information today cascades
from countless outlets and channels, from the Huffington Post to
Politico.com to CBS News and beyond.
But now there's
additional evidence that casts doubt on the bias claims aimed -- with
particular venom -- at three broadcast networks.
The Center
for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where
researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found
that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John
McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
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You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.
During the evening
news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all
three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news
people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were
positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also
tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the
statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based
media center.
Conservatives have been snarling about the
grotesque disparity revealed by another study, the online Tyndall
Report, which showed Obama receiving more than twice as much network
air time as McCain in the last month and a half. Obama got 166 minutes
of coverage in the seven weeks after the end of the primary season,
compared with 67 minutes for McCain,
according to longtime network-news observer Andrew Tyndall.
I wrote last week that the networks should do more to better balance
the air time. But I also suggested that much of the attention to Obama
was far from glowing.
That earned a spasm of e-mails that described me as irrational, unpatriotic and . . . somehow . . . French.
But the center's director, RobertLichter, who has won conservative
hearts with several of his previous studies, told me the facts were the
facts.
"This information should blow away this silly assumption that more coverage is always better coverage," he said.
Here's a bit more on the research, so you'll understand how the
communications professor and his researchers arrived at their
conclusions.
The center reviews and "codes" statements on the
evening news as positive or negative toward the candidates. For
example, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell said in June that Obama "has
problems" with white men and suburban women, the media center deemed
that a negative.
The positive and negative remarks about each
candidate are then totaled to calculate the percentages that cut for
and against them.
Visual images and other more subjective cues
are not assessed. But the tracking applies a measure of analytical
rigor to a field rife with seat-of-the-pants fulminations.
The
media center's most recent batch of data covers nightly newscasts
beginning June 8, the day after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded the
Democratic nomination, ushering in the start of the general-election
campaign. The data ran through Monday, as Obama began his overseas trip.
Most on-air statements during that time could not be classified as
positive or negative, Lichter said. The study found, on average, less
than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three
networks combined -- not exactly embracing or pummeling Obama or
McCain. But when a point of view did emerge, it tended to tilt against
Obama.
That was a reversal of the trend during the primaries,
when the same researchers found that 64% of statements about Obama --
new to the political spotlight -- were positive, but just 43% of
statements about McCain were positive.
Such reversals are
nothing new in national politics, as reporters tend to warm up to
newcomers, then turn increasingly critical when such candidates emerge
as front-runners.
It might be tempting to discount the latest findings by Lichter's researchers. But this guy is anything but a liberal toady.
In 2006, conservative cable showmen Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly had
Lichter, a onetime Fox News contributor, on their programs. They
heralded his findings in the congressional midterm election: that the
networks were giving far more positive coverage to the Democrats.
More proof of the liberal domination of the media, Beck and O'Reilly declared.
Now the same researchers have found something less palatable to those conspiracy theorists.
But don't expect cable talking heads to end their trashing of the networks.
Repeated assertions that the networks are in the tank for Democrats
represent not only an article of faith on Fox, but a crucial piece of
branding. On Thursday night, O'Reilly and his trusty lieutenant Bernard
Goldberg worked themselves into righteous indignation -- again -- about
the liberal bias they
knew was lurking.
Goldberg seemed gleeful beyond measure in saying that "they're fiddling while their ratings are burning."
O'Reilly assured viewers that "the folks" -- whom he claims to treasure
far more than effete network executives do -- "understand what's
happening."
By the way, Lichter's group also surveys the first
half-hour of "Special Report With Brit Hume," Fox News' answer to the
network evening news shows.
The review found that, since the
start of the general-election campaign, "Special Report" offered more
opinions on the two candidates than all three networks combined.
No surprise there. Previous research has shown Fox News to be opinion-heavy.
"Special Report" was tougher than the networks on Obama -- with 79% of
the statements about the Democrat negative, compared with 61% negative
on McCain.
There's plenty of room for questioning the networks' performance and watching closely for symptoms of Obamamania.
But could we at least remain focused on what ABC, NBC and CBS actually
put on the air, rather than illusions that their critics create to puff
themselves up?
james....@latimes.com
