Third Party & Independents: Archives

You also forgot to mention that you work for Media Tenor - the group that did the study and report that you’re citing.

Also, you conveniently leave out some facts that the graphs show which don’t fit your hypothesis - You say that NBC focused more on the issues (looking at the 3rd graph down the page) citing NBC’s focus on the the campaign more than personality. But according to your research, both ABC and CBS had a higher percentage of comments talking about policies than NBC - which in my mind is more substantial information than campaign information, regardless of what else they said about personality.

Also, I think it’s premature to cite NBC as politically neutral or any other network as biased until you do the same study after the RNC in a few weeks.

re-reading my own comments- that was quite negative. didn’t realize i could be such a jerk ;)

I would also like to commend you for making a non-partisan effort to tackling the incredibly hairy issue of media bias. Interesting stuff to consider at least.

I work for Media Tenor and I’m really happy to share the findings of our studies with the users of Watchblog. I’m sure our reports can bring many
ideas and point out interesting trends in the media coverage of the presidential election. If by any chance I wanted, it would be easily to use
another name in my postings, right?

About your remark on the issues, indeed it’s right. I corrected a couple of minutes ago in our website after a colleague pointed this out.

Are the tiny three networks even relevant anymore? NBC, CBS, ABC? In this day when there’s CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, talk radio, and the Blogosphere? These days it seems like everybody is a pundit all fighting for that one person in America who still doesn’t speak his mind to all who would listen.

It wouldn’t surprise me that NBC would be a little more negative towards Kerry than the others; they’re owned by GE, a huge campaign contributor and a huge cog in the proverbial military-industrial complex (according to opensecrets.org, GE gave 450k to RNC affiliated committees and about 280k to DNC affiliated committees).

On the other hand, this also begs the question of the media’s role in all this hullabaloo of an election (and all elections, really). Being critical of a politician should be apart of the media’s job. I just wish they were critical of ALL politicians, but then that might really turn people off to politics.

I wish there were more TV/cable stations like C-Span that just plop a camera down and film what’s happening. I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind without the commentary.

Isadora, your report seems to be based on two premises that I don’t necessarily think should be taken for granted:

1) That a balance of positive and negative comments is the same as balanced reporting. I don’t want to say that the networks should refrain from negative comments during conventions, of course, but the bottom line is that a political convention is always just pure positivity — all the negativity seen in the coverage was an editorial choice on the part of the networks. One could argue that NBC’s coverage, which may look the most balanced, is actually radically unbalanced towards negative statements because instead of just reporting on the positivity on display they chose to artificially add negativity to the coverage.

Also, sometimes a commentator’s positive or negative comment has nothing to do with being balanced and everything to do with simply being partisan. And sometimes not. On PBS, for example, if both David Brooks and Mark Shields say something like “That was a good speech”… would that count as 2 positive comments? If so, does that mean that PBS wasn’t being balanced? I don’t think so - David Brooks, a supporter of the Bush Administration, may have simply been calling it like he saw it. It’s possible that much of the negative reporting wasn’t balanced at all, that perhaps much of it was due to GOP shills parroting the RNC’s daily talking points.

2) That simply reporting on and discussing policy issues at all is bad for John Kerry. This is a cynical view, but it’s not necessarily true. Perhaps Kerry wants the country to openly discuss the issues facing America?

Really, you cannot issue a fair report about the coverage of the Democratic Convention at all until you’ve compared it side by side to the coverage of the Republican convention. It seems a little premature to pass judgement at this time.

-Cf