Back Talk

A joint study by The Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, not exactly conservative groups, found that media coverage of the presidential race has been strongly sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans. That the mainstream media is biased, is not much of a revelation since every poll, survey, and study for years has shown this to be the case, and it will shock nobody that the media is not eager to print the results. In fact, the only reference you are likely to hear from the media on this subject is how balanced and unbiased they are. Tut, tut. “Investors Business Daily” published the study results that stated “Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage, but they get much more coverage. IBD states this is particularly evident on morning news shows, which produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) that focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans.” The worst bias was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone “positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.” Television has a similar problem where Democrats get mush better treatment. Reviewing 154 stories on evening network newscasts over the course of 109 weeknights, the survey found that “Democrats were presented in a positive light more than twice as often as they were portrayed as negative. Positive tones for Republicans were detected in less than a fifth of stories while a negative tone was twice as common.” National Public Radio, where everyone’s tax money – Democrat and Republican – goes to support was shown to be equally biased. The study found “NPR’s ‘Morning Edition.’ approvingly covered Democrats more than a third as often as Republicans. Negative coverage of Democrats was a negligible 5.9%.” Is it any wonder that many of us read newsprint in a perpetual state of doubt?