This is from a good James Fallows round-up of research on the tone of campaign coverage. Obama always has more negative than positive coverage, while Romney generally has more positive than negative. Your liberal media at work.
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Palli
Oh really?
Legalize
I wonder why Paul had such positive coverage. Wacky sideshow freak factor?
rlrr
Why is there any positive coverage of Gingrich?
Comrade Dread
Well, come on, we can’t pile on the white guy, it would make us all look racist.
shortstop
This cannot be true. The Romney people were assuring us just last week that Romney coverage is way more negative than Obama coverage, and I’m sure they have their own set of objective facts to back that…heh.
Nina
I suspect that the positive Paul coverage was because he was actually saying something different, and because many news people smoked pot in college and don’t mind a harmless way to support legalization so long as their bosses don’t clue in.
Hill Dweller
Despite Romney being the biggest liar I’ve ever seen running for President, he gets better press.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Wonder what’s so different about Obama that could cause such a disparity?
Comrade Dread
@rlrr: There are lot of people who live in denial who still view him as a hero for leading the Republican Revolution.
Jennifer
Of course the media is liberal. Otherwise coverage of Romney would be 100% positive, and coverage of Obama would be 100% negative.
You know – fair ‘n balanced.
Villago Delenda Est
The parasite slime that is Rmoney needs all the help he can get, and the ZOMG we need a horse race MSM is all to happy to help.
slag
Obviously, mistermix, you’re forgetting those times Romney saved the US auto industry and killed Osama Bin Laden. The man’s a national hero. Why is he getting any negative press coverage at all?
amk
But, but .., wasn’t jon stewart whining that media was totally ignoring paul, the old crazy coot ? Repeatedly ?
Villago Delenda Est
@Legalize:
I think that’s basically it. Comic relief.
If Paul were actually in any serious danger of winning the nomination, the MSM would not have been able to pump out enough stories about Paul’s ties with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
amk
@Jennifer: LOL. Nice.
pragmatism
ot but did y’allz see the amusing michelle aka tblogg aka tbogg v. the firebaggers thread at his joint?
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. elections are like magnets?
SatanicPanic
But the media is ignoring Ron! If only people heard more about him they would support his campaign for freedom to own people!
Turgidson
@Jennifer:
Exactamundo.
Since Obama is so obviously an evil Kenyan marxist anti-colonial fascist socialist Manchurian candidate who is so devious as to begin planning, before he was even conceived, this elaborate scheme to be president despite being born in Kenya, while also being so dumb as to be completely incoherent without a teleprompter, and pops open a bottle of champagne every time an American applies for food stamps, has a secret force of jackbooted thugs quietly taking away everyone’s guns, is responsible for job losses that began before he was elected, has drowned the country in debt after a spending binge benefiting his labor thug pals, is anti-capitalism but also too close to Wall Street, apologizes for America abroad, signed a bill authorizing government bureaucrats to kill grandma, is a Muslim who also believes every word Rev. Wright ever said, and would have appointed Bill Ayers Sec. of Homeland Security if only the heroic Sean Hannity hadn’t put a stop to it. Oh, and Acorn. And he wants to be reelected so that he can immediately surrender to Putin upon inauguration. And he’s only not running drugs on the South Side of Chicago because of affirmative action.
So, you see, any positive coverage of Obama, ever, at all, is proof that the media is hopelessly liberal and biased against real workin Amurkin white conservatives.
Maude
@Hill Dweller:
I think it’s a tie with Reagan.
Soprano2
I’ve started calling Diane Rehm’s Friday News Roundup the “How Did Obama Fuck Up This Week” hour, because they rarely have anything good to say about Obama, and it’s all about how the news of the week will hurt Obama and help Romney.
Rosalita
@pragmatism: that’s one entertaining post. between TBogg and Charlie Pierce I’ve been having a heck of a lunchtime read today.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Which is why I don’t buy into Zandar’s “Obama needs to put forth a stimulus and talk about what the Republicans are doing to the economy” plan. Obama talks about the economy, and he talks about what Republicans are doing. Do we hear about it? Not very often.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
That little bit of analysis wins this week’s Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award.
pragmatism
@Rosalita: pierce has been on fire lately. i appropriate (sometimes with attribution!) many of his bon mots.
Pyro Joe
Oh, I’ll enjoy shoving this one in the the faces of the Ron Paul worshipers.
Not that it will change their minds, I just want to see how they justify it.
Smiling Mortician
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: This is nice on so many levels.
Rosalita
@pragmatism: did you read today’s post re Wisconsin? “There are enough weasels in that sentence to make a coat”. LOL
comrade scott's agenda of rage
More on the librul media.
This week in Gene Weingarten’s monthly chat at the Kaplan News Daily, he said this in response to a question about asshats like Glenn Kessler holding Dems to a stricter standard when judging their statements:
Hey Gene, your Villager brethren massively fail at whatever quandary you seem to think they’re in. Face it, you’re afraid of phone calls and letters from the wingnuts.
Lev
I’m actually kind of amazed the ratio is that close.
pragmatism
@Rosalita: lol. i love the “goggle eyed homunculus” permanent descriptor that walker has rightfully earned.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Smiling Mortician:
Alas, it’s not original. I first picked it up here:
http://jmhm.livejournal.com/58471.html?delayedid=
The late Steve Gilliard used it on occasion as have others.
Amir Khalid
This may be related. I’ve noticed that the Obama-vs.-Romney polling always counts one man’s share of the popular vote against the other’s. As I understand (because it’s been explained here again and again) what matters is the comparative electoral vote count, which shouldn’t be hard to work out from the state-by-state poll numbers because, hey, that’s what spreadsheets are for. Am I right to suspect that Obama has a substantially bigger lead by this count?
mdblanche
@amk:
@SatanicPanic:
@Pyro Joe:
Well, to be fair this study is supposed to be measuring quality rather than quantity of coverage. I’m pretty sure there are more stories out there about Obama and Romney and even Gingrich than there are about RonPaul. For the Paulites, it’s not enough to say nice things about their savior from time to time, you’ve got to obsessively praise him too.
gbear
@rlrr:
Because he’s a freakin’ GENIUS!!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Amir Khalid:
My go to site for that kind of thing:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: It shifts from time to time, but yes Obama is way ahead of Willard in the electoral vote count. Apparently Ohio has softened up for him lately, but I still think he carries there. On November 6th, if Obama wins Pennsylvania, that’s pretty much it. Because he will win all three of the West Coast states easily. Anything else after that will be piling on.
Frankensteinbeck
1. I thought the disparity was much worse than this. It’s still obviously biased, but it’s kind of a relief to know it’s less biased than I thought.
2. @Legalize: Paul has to be covered in a positive way or it will become public knowledge that he’s neither principled nor a Republican, he’s an insane conspiracy theorist. This would bring down any number of houses of cards that the media very much wants to keep in place. Plus, they ain’t bright and fall for their own bullshit a lot.
3. @Belafon (formerly anonevent): THIS.
beltane
@gbear: A Genius and an “Idea Factory” (remember that one?)
Kane
There were far more negative stories about Obama throughout the 2008 campaign, but the majority managed to see through it.
JPL
Romney does not want the Fed to stimulate the economy cuz that would be bad. The news media should nail him on that statement alone.
grandpa john
@Amir Khalid: Go to RCP’s We page and in the left column open “RCP Electoral College Map” or follow the following link “http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html and all that work is already done for you. Currently The EV map is Obama-237, Mitt- 170, 1319 Toss-up
redshirt
@pragmatism: That TBOGG thread is mostly pure depression. Wow, some FDL’er’s are freaking deluded.
RalfW
I think there is bias in the press, particularly media types who are terrified of ever being accused of liberalism (yous, all you legacy network hacks, I’m lookin’ at you).
But sitting Presidents pretty much always get more negative than the challenger. Because, right or wrong, they get stuck with being responsible.
My issue is not so much (though some) with the Romney/Obama split, but that GOPs in Congress get off with wrecking damn near everything is sight, but they can do the doorbell-flaming bag of poo trick over and over and the press goes right along…
Zifnab
The Paul coverage illustrates the masterful ways a handful of vocal activists can work the ref. Honestly, Obama could really take a page from Paul by getting his supporters to obsessively complain about negative media coverage. Say what you will, but it clearly works.
Chris
@Legalize:
Because there’s a class of liberals, centrists and moderate Republicans who’re permanently, desperately looking for an Arnie Vinick figure to save the GOP from itself and restore it to its Reasonable and Very Serious roots. Since Paul’s an outlier who’s pro-drug and anti-war (at least at first glance), some people think he’s that guy.
(Other people thought McCain was That Guy, until he gave them all sads by picking Snowbilly Barbie as his veep. Tis truly written, hope springs eternal).
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid:
Popular vote versus electoral college votes:
Actually yes. Obama does have a good lead in the electoral college of about a hundred votes. I’ll see if I can find a link.
Try this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/31/1096205/-The-E-C-Map-for-5-31-12
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Zifnab:
We in Left Blogistania have been doing that for years…ever since Gore’s run in 2000.
It’s made a lot of difference.
Marc Mckenzie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
100% correct about this.
mdblanche
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Isn’t that what the President spent most of last fall doing?
Also too, I’m pretty sure since then he’s finally given the speech he always needed to give on the economy three or four times. There are a lot of people with the memory of a goldfish out there, and not all of them work for the MSM.
@Amir Khalid: But to get meaningful national data, you’d need to poll enough people to get 51 significant sub-samples. That’s an awful lot of resources and this far out from the election just not worth it. But we can’t have our horse-race numbers if we don’t poll at all, so we have to poll the national popular vote. If we did things your way, poor little Villagers would have to go to bed without any horse-race. Could you really live with that on your conscience?
Calouste
@Amir Khalid:
You’ll start hearing about state polls in the MSM as soon as Romney is close in one. Obama being up by 6 points in Ohio doesn’t fit the horse race narrative, as no Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio.
Tony J
@Jennifer:
That’s funny because it’s true.
The wingnuts I listen in on seem to operate on a grading scale where MSM coverage of either Party is judged according to how favourably journalists cover their own personal shibboleths, which are generally way, way to the Right of anything the GOP could openly state (though that’s been changing since 2008 and the mainstreaming of Teabagger ‘philosophy’) as Republican policy.
So the fact that Romney gets better coverage than Obama doesn’t penetrate their conviction that the MSM is biased towards Democrats, because they don’t see the MSM (FOX excluded, natch) actively engaged in hounding Obama from office by exposing all of those terrible crimes against Amercia listed by Turgidson @ 18, they just see the MSM covering up for him by burying the truths they consider self evident.
OTOH, every time Obama’s people say something bad about Romney, they genuinely seem to think that if the MSM doesn’t front page its coverage with “Kenyan Usurper Lies About Amercia’s Great White Hope!” it just proves how in the tank for Obama they are. Anything short of that headline is Liberal Bias! full-stop, period.
Watching from over here in the UK (where we have our own problems with Media bias) it never ceases to amaze and terrify me how malignantly useless your MSM is, and how dangerous its failure could turn out to be for everyone else.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: .
http://www.electoral-vote.com/ show Obama with 289. Of course those polls show Obama “barely winning” Oregon, which he won 57-40 in 2008, so take the leaners with a grain of salt.
slag
@Tony J:
How does one go about getting a copy of that iphone app?
trollhattan
O/T, Justice rolling on Florida voter suppression.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/justice_department_demands_florida_stop_purging_voter_rolls.php
grandpa john
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: The problem I have with their page is that they are looking only at last poll taken, RCP uses an average of latest polls which helps eliminate outliers like rasmussen. For example Ohio which is shown red Using the latest Ras poll.There has been 11 polls taken in Ohio since the first of march, this latest one by Rasmussen is the only one showing him in the lead. The actual average during April and May is Obama by 3.8
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Electoral-vote is a treasure trove of info. The methodology reflects changing poll numbers as they are conducted. The best thing to do is click on the “Previous Report” link over on the right side of Maine and that’ll give you a good idea of how things change from day-to-day.
For example, today, 1 June, it shows
Obama 289
Rmoney 243
Ties 6
Whereas yesterday, 31 May, it shows
Obama 304
Rmoney 225
Ties 9
slag
@MikeJ:
That’s all fine and good, but I think I’m ready to see Obama absolutely grind Rmoney into the ground. I’m starting to really have a thing against him and a mere forty-five electorals will not be a satisfying enough ass-whooping. I guess election season has finally started.
Kane
It would be interesting to see a graph comparing the positive/negative coverage of Romney in 2011-2012 with the positive/negative coverage of Obama in 2007-2008.
gbear
@redshirt: I read it for a bit but had to give up. 100 comments in and nobody will answer TBogg’s question. Nobody there can even SEE the question. He’s unleashed a tsunami of butthurt.
Zifnab
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I should firstly note that MSNBC took a liberal lean specifically to cater to the DKos / Left Blogistania crowd. They were playing the fair’n’boring card with CNN twelve years ago. Now they’ve got Maddow and O’Donnell. I’d call that a big improvement.
Secondly, I can take a stroll down Fireblogger Lake and Glenn Greenwald’s favorite haunts to get the kind of anti-Obama invective that would make O’Reily’s falafal curl. Liberals are a fractious bunch, and you can always find a high profile liberal ready to blast the President. It was significantly harder to find a big name Republican with a bad thing to say about Bush.
So I wouldn’t discount the ref working that lefty groups have already accomplished (just check My-Two-Dads JC Penny ad that got thrown in the face of One Million Moms – you think that would have happened without some lefty advocacy?) I also wouldn’t run off and call the Left-o-sphere’s message air-tight.
redshirt
@gbear: It makes me sad, but also makes we want to slap people. Hate to Goodwin myself, but I used to wonder how the normal German folks could let something like NAZIism rise up in their midst. But I get it now, I really do. Attacked from the Left for not being “pure”. Constantly attacked from the Right just because. And a dedicated, relentless propaganda machine focused on spreading lies and dirtying the water. Add in some dirty tricks and FEAR FEAR FEAR, and it’s easy to see now how a “normal” country can quickly be taken hostage by a maniacal but very small minority.
Marc Mckenzie
@Tony J:
It’s already happened–remember George W. Bush?
Eight years of incompetence, war, and fucking up the economy, and even with his. I bears on the toilet the MSM was still performing verbal fellatio on him. Nowadays they’ve just plain forgotten what he did and throw it all in Obama’s lap.
ImJohnGalt
Speaking of DC, you’ve got to read the cesspool of comments attached to the article about one of the Green Lanterns being re-written as a gay man.. I’m shocked when I see comments like this – I wonder how it is that I *never* come across anyone like this in my day-to-day up here in Toronto. My understanding of people and the world is astoundingly incomplete.
Valdivia
That Tbogg post is priceless, epic actually.
A ‘visit from the direct election jesus’?
That fucking made my day.
Tony J
@slag:
I’m afraid it’s only available to customers with valid Press credentials. From what I can see, though, they’re gobbling it up.
Southern Beale
Speaking of media, just read that Chris White, the Fox News guy who made that blatant anti-Obama propaganda ad that ran on Fox & Friends, had been approached by CNN to move to the network at twice his salary.
That offer has since been rescinded since the piece blew up on everyone’s face.
CNN might want to stop raiding Fox News for its on-air “talent.”
JPL
Zimmerman’s bond is revoked…hahaha
pragmatism
@JPL: 2 passports, moving money around, claiming that he’s broke when he has $135K in his bank: all the actions of an innocent man.
slag
@Tony J: Bummer. Cuz I think that Tumblr would be more hilarious than this one: http://amerciaiswithmitt.tumblr.com/ .
rikyrah
dude,
get to that PEW study which showed the President getting 90% negative coverage.
it’s a miracle the man has any favorables at all
MikeJ
@ImJohnGalt:
Most of those people wouldn’t be assholes quite as vocally in person. Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t be assholes, they would just be more discreet about it. Although a few of them would almost certainly be that bad even IRL.
gene108
Fallows is an idiot.
None of the arguments being made by the opposition are sane.
The don’t have to be sane.
Their supporters do not want them to be sane.
The crazier the better for Republicans, because that’s what fires up the base.
We’ve long ago passed the threshold that we have any sort of civilizing force, with regards to Republican behavior.
Their leadership backed endless investigations about President Clinton about things he did, while governor of Arkansas (not as President), they lied us into a war in Iraq and this Fallows joker really thinks sanity has any part in the discourse any more?
Republicans and the right-wing noise machine crank up the howler monkey crazy to 11 all the time, so the media looks around at what’s being said and lo and behold, it’s stuff slamming Obama, so the MSM being the good stenographers that they are passes on right-wing talking points.
The MSM did this in the 1990’s. They were called out about this what amounted to as much of a liberal backlash as liberals seem to be able to mount in this country, with Air America Radio and Sen. Franken’s excellent book Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
I just don’t know why anyone, who considers himself smart, which I’m sure Fallows does believes right-wing arguments have to be sane anymore.
JPL
@pragmatism: Who hands in a passport that has been reported lost.. George Zimmerman that’s who.
ImJohnGalt
@MikeJ: Except they’re using facebook comments, so they’re not even hiding behind anonymity. My mind boggles at the undistilled ignorance and ill will in that thread.
MattR
@mdblanche: If you go to the Pew website linked in the Fallows piece, another tab on the graph is “volume of coverage” and Ron Paul clearly and consistently gets the least coverage.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@pragmatism: The second passport thing is what is going to land his murdering ass back in jail; you’ll note the defense attorney is not even addressing that issue.
Judges REALLY don’t like being lied to. The defense attorney’s going to have to pull yeoman’s duty trying to cover his ass on this as well or face some sanctions, as the way things stand, it’s kind of looking like he knew about the cash and didn’t say anything.
pragmatism
@JPL: i’m sure that eric holder’s racistically motivated gubmint thugs OR other blah people stole the passport, waited for him to order another one and then surreptitiously placed the passport in his possession and he had to turn it back in because America. the weirdest part: the replaced passport smelled like skittles. sour skittles.
Frankensteinbeck
@MattR:
Again, enough scrutiny and people might actually find out who Ron Paul is and what he stands for. The media has had to work really, REALLY hard to cherry pick just those positions that make him sound like a principled Republican. They feel free to throw in the goldbug stuff because very few people know enough about economics to know it’s actually a tin foil hat position.
MattR
@Frankensteinbeck: I am not saying the level of coverage is good, bad, appropriate or not. Just backing up mdblanche’s point that just because Ron Paul has gotten positive coverage does not mean that there has been a lot of coverage (as amk, SatanicPanic and others asserted)
Arclite
I’d like to see similar graphs for 2008, 2004, & 2000 elections, just to set context.
Frankensteinbeck
@MattR:
Indeed! I’m adding to that by asserting that those are two halves of the same issue – pretending Ron Paul is a real part of the Republican party, and not a way of encouraging Libertarians to vote Republican.
Tony J
@Marc Mckenzie:
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. It’s astounding and frightening what your MSM is both willing and able to do on behalf of the Republican Party.
But Bush Junior, for all his faults, did do something about the economy when he absolutely had to, and didn’t throw America into a war with Iran when he could have. A Romney Administration wouldn’t, and would, respectively, and your MSM – still – thinks the most important issue facing America’s Fourth Estate is the preservation of a fake balance between coverage of the two established political parties, no matter what.
And as a ferriner, that quality of bought and paid for insanity worries me. I am concerned, and not in the trollish way.
gvg
Um, the press does not have a liberal bias anymore as I can deduce from other kinds of coverage.
There is a big element of racism in a lot of Obama coverage.
That said…well the person who actually is President is just hugely more important than someone who is just running and he is a factor in umpteen stories everyday so Obama is just going to get more coverage than Romney and that is the way it should be. Its also a lousy economy with a lot of bad news so a lot of the coverage is going to come out a “negative” and yet a lot of people still know it would have been worse with McCain and /romney isn’t a good replacement.
Obama has an electoral college advantage but as I understand it that is related to his popularity majority. I’m pretty sure Nate Silver explained that their is a normal lag between popular opinion and the electoral college and if Obama’s popularity compared to mitts goes down for a while, the electoral college will after a time lag, reflect the change in opinion-therefore do not get complacent. first wish should be for the economy to improve. I know the president doesn’t have much control over that right now, but it really is what we need.