Media Bias by the Numbers
Follow the money, writes William Tate:
An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans.
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
And the International Herald Tribune reports
The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.
While the disparity in coverage of Obama and McCain is revealing, the quality of news coverage is much more important. And the media are all too often willing to give Obama a pass on his distortions.
For example, last night Barack Obama said on NBC: "What I said even at the time of the debate of the surge was that when you put 30,000 American troops on the ground, of course it's going to have an impact. There's no doubt about that."
That's not true. In January 2007, Obama said that the surge would not reduce the level of violence (see the YouTube video below). But Brian Williams never called Obama out on this lie.