July 22, 2004
Does Edwards have what Kerry is missing?
On the top three issues, Kerry received the most media criticism during the last six months, Edwards received much more positive coverage.
John Kerry’s political orientation (on a liberal-conservative scale) was, since the beginning of the year, a campaign issue with almost 32.2 % of statements on the subject being negative and 12% positive. At the same time, Edward's political leaning received 26.9% of positive statements and 9% negative. (The remaining share corresponds to statements with neutral ratings.)
The latest report from Media Tenor shows that, in the coverage of tax policy, 35.8% of the statements on Kerry were negative, while Edwards received 5.3% negative coverage.
You can find the complete report with graphics at: http://www.mediatenor.com/Election062204.htm
Posted by Isadora Badi at July 22, 2004 01:40 PMInteresting post. So much for the left wing media.
Posted by: Greg at July 22, 2004 11:33 PMIt seems to me that these statistics don’t really mean a lot.
What does it mean if coverage is negative or positive, if you’re not also talking about the actions/policies and relative visability of the figure being covered?
Seems like Mother Theresa got a lot of postive press while Jeffrey Dahmer got a lot of negative press (to use an outrageous example). Does this say the media is biased somehow? Of course not.
It seems to me pretty obvious that Kerry gets more negative press simply because he’s been the front-runner and the appointed Dem nominee for most of the last six months while Edwards was largely out of the picture and has so far escaped real scrutiny.
Why bother to air/print negative stories about a candidate’s tax policy if they’re not even on the ticket? Expect that to change in a big way over the NEXT six months.
Posted by: Martin at July 23, 2004 01:00 AMCorrection: Expect that to change over the next THREE months—six months from now Edwards and Kerry will be getting considerably less press of either the negative or positive variety.
Posted by: Martin at July 23, 2004 01:20 AM
