Jim Rutenberg has a story in the NYT, on the website right now, suggesting that “the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the [presidential] candidates.”
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage.
He goes on to cite the Tyndall Report, which notes that, in June, the three primetime newscasts devoted 48 minutes of coverage to McCain and 114 on Obama. He leads with the fact that there’s a huge contingent of domestic and international reporters accompanying Obama on his swing through Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and Obama’s been on more magazine covers. It’s a fair point that Obama’s gotten more coverage than McCain has, and there are obvious reasons why the media is giving Obama more airtime, some of which are spelled out in the article. But the real imbalance has more to do with how they’ve been covered so far. For example, the media helped to drive the rumors that Obama might — just might — be a secret Muslim and may have attended a madrassa. There were stories about Michelle Obama’s militancy, how the Obamas attended a black separatist church, how Obama flip-flopped on public financing (fair game) without noting that McCain opted in to the program to secure a loan during the primaries and then backed out, something that only the FCC can grant. That is, he’s breaking the law. But there wasn’t much about that. There are plenty of these types of examples, and the folks at Media Matters have them chronicled, including this excellent piece.
McCain may get less airtime than Obama, but he ridiculously more positive coverage.
TAGS: Iraq, mccain, Muslim, obama, Politics
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