About the admission from the Washington Post...

United States
November 13, 2008 7:07pm CST
Did everyone hear about the Washington Post writer who tracked all their articles, editorials, pictures, etc, on McCain and Obama from the date of Obama's start as the official Democratic candidate, up to the election? Her finding were very clear: the paper had favored Obama significantly over McCain. Here's an article about her article: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=316120 Please read it and comment. He brings up some good points about all of this, including how they (the media that supported Obama so warmly) are now already saying he is facing the toughest situations of any president EVER... Well, read it and then come talk about it here!
2 people like this
7 responses
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
14 Nov 08
Show me any newspaper, TV news or any other news media that can truly be said not to be biased in some way or another and I'll throw up my hands in horror at your story. Otherwise, what did you really expect? Maybe they weren't really consciously biased. Maybe they reported honestly on what the majority always wanted.
1 person likes this
• United States
14 Nov 08
owlwings, did you actually READ the article? True journalists are NOT supposed to report on "what the majority always wanted"! They are supposed to be completely unbiased. Do you remember the arguments when reporters were in war zones and taking pictures and reporting on the most devastating, horrible stuff, and people were saying "what kind of person are you, why can't you stop, put your mic down, put your camera down and HELP?" They couldn't, because they are "supposed to be completely objective and impartial." I can't believe people in this country have so easily forgotten the role of the press and the way that journalists CLUNG to that role, not that long ago! Next, I will show you another news media that can truly be said to be not biased on this campaign: FoxNews. http://journalism.org/node/13437 You have to look carefully at the graphs. They are comparing MSNBC, FOX, CNN. Now, keep in mind that they are comparing each news channel of those three to the OVERALL MEDIA COVERAGE (all media). IN that comparison, Fox comes out more positive for McCain -- compared to the overall media coverage (more positive coverage of McCain than the rest of the media). But the real story is told when you compare FOX's coverage of McCain to FOX's coverage of Obama: there you will see exactly the SAME amount of NEGATIVE coverage for EACH candidate. And in fact, Obama got slightly more positive coverage on FOX than McCain did. But overall, it clearly shows that FOX is the ONLY one that gave even, balanced coverage to each candidate.
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
14 Nov 08
Yes, I read the article. It is not unbiased itself. In fact it does what any openly biased news media does: reports a story using emotive language in order to lend credence, later on in the article to its own clearly stated opinions. One News Now is a strongly Christian (in a rather narrow sense of the word) 'news service'. Nearly all of their writing shows strong bias to the 'right' (in both senses of the word) way of thinking. They make no bones about their bias, of course. The very first question in the FAQs is answered with the following words: "OneNewsNow.com is the website of the American Family News Network (AFN), a national Christian news service. Our goal is to present the day's news from a biblical perspective." Later, they state that they "... bring you the most important news from a Christian perspective." That is a fair statement, as far as it goes, however, their 'Christian perspective' also happens to be their own, rather narrow and rather conservative/Republican, one. On the page about their editorial team, they say "At OneNewsNow.com, you will get your news from reporters you can trust to give the latest news without the liberal bias that characterizes so much of the "mainstream" media." Of course, the article you quote must be read in the context of the media that published it, and I did do that. To me, all it amounts to is a 'whine' and a rant that another news media is actually just as biased as itself - only in a direction it doesn't happen to support. It is a poor piece of writing.
@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
14 Nov 08
The overwhelming message that comes out of that article on Journalism.org (which, I have to say, impresses me by its apparent objectivity) bears out strongly what I already knew: that NO news media can be truly unbiased. Some may claim to be (and perhaps that is what your original article is griping at) but every editorial team and every reporter eventually has their own axe to grind, however subtly. I disagree with your statement that Fox news is unbiased. According to the figures it is clear that MSNBC was much more obviously negative about the Republican campaign than Fox but the graph demonstrates, overall, what I feel is a serious disease of the media - that negativity sells better than positivity. This tendency to gripe in the name of critical appraisal is catching and very subversive. I find myself doing it far too often and, to my mind, it is a basically un-Christian attitude.
1 person likes this
• United States
14 Nov 08
I read a lot newspapers, and their stance becomes obvious to me rather quickly. It has gotten to the point where you cannot find an objective newspaper. It was not always like that. Since that is the case today, I might as well just buy the newspapers that are conversative.
1 person likes this
@ParaTed2k (22940)
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin
14 Nov 08
Good to see a reporter proving what the rest of us have known for years. I'll give her credit though, it's rare to find a journalist who is willing to call their own to the carpet.
@kareng (80243)
• United States
14 Nov 08
This also happened on national network TV stations. No big surprise.
@Destiny007 (5805)
• United States
14 Nov 08
Well, as the article plainly points out, 0bama is not facing the toughest things a president ever inherited, Reagan had much worse to deal with after that boneheaded Carter left. 0bama obviously is not going to be another Reagan, in fact it looks like he is going to be another Carter... and everything that he has said about his plans so far indicate that we will be in much worse shape when he leaves than what we are now. Between his plans to do his version of the Hitler Youth complete with mandatory service to his plans for socializing every aspect of our government and services. Add to that his very damaging ideas for energy production and fighting non-existant man made climate change, and his ideas to make us subservient to the UN and responsible for fighting global poverty with our tax dollars at a time when we can barely make ends meet, and you have a recipe for disaster. All the media is doing is paving the way for 0bama to break his campaign promises and then try to blame Bush for it. We already know that it is the democrats like Barney Frank and others who blocked the proposed changes of FannyMae and FreddieMac by Bush and McCain both while saying that there was NO problem with them, and we were in no danger of them failing. Well guess what... they failed , and in doing so they sparked the economic problems that we are now facing, and those problems have had a ripple effect throughout the entire world. While 0bam was running on the platform of change and Blaming everything on the last 8 years of failed Bush policies, the plain fact is that the blame falls squarely on the last 30 of failed democrat policies initiated by Carter and compounded by Clinton. To verify this, all one has to do is a little research, but far too many are way too lazy to do that. The media got 0bama elected, and now the media is going to be 0bama's cheering section, in the same way that they were Bush's detractors.
@jonesy123 (3948)
• United States
14 Nov 08
I read the original. They basically admitted some bias in some areas but all essentially for the greater good of getting the right guy into the right position. No apology whatsoever. The ends merits the means (or however that saying goes). The media has long been bias towards one or the other. If one doesn't do their own research to get a well rounded picture, one deserves what's coming to him/her. Unfortunately with this we all may get to suffer (or benefit; I'm hoping for the latter).
• United States
14 Nov 08
You're right, they admit they were biased, but do NOT admit doing wrong. The saying is "the end justifies the means". And it is SO TRUE of liberals, progressives, or what is their new name?? I just heard it and already forgot.
• United States
14 Nov 08
That was a very enlightening article and was further confirmation that IMO there was nothing fair or impartial about the whole campaign. That includes not only the media but the financial backing.