Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's ombudsman, assesses the paper's campaign coverage:
The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
According to Howell, the Post's coverage was too poll-drive and "horse-race" news stories outnumbered issues-oriented stories over the past year by two-to-one. The balance of positive and negative coverage of the two candidates was equally lopsided in both the news and op-ed pages. Howell offers this explanation:
Post reporters, photographers and editors -- like most of the national news media -- found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.
Because Post reporters "love the new" they offered favorable coverage of Sarah Palin, right? Not exactly. Here's Howell's take on the Post's coverage of the veep candidates:
One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her. There were several good stories on her, the best on page 1 by Sally Jenkins on how Palin grew up in Alaska.
But I don't think it's that way. The generic American is far less interested in the truth than in what re-inforces his worldview. The Post will only suffer if they remain an Obama mouthpiece after his Administration becomes unpopular. And they're much too smart and ethically flexible for that.
It's craigslist that's killing old media, not their ethical corruption.
Is this not somewhat explained by the fact that Biden has been a sitting senator for 35 years, with easily accessible information of all sorts regarding his time there? I'm guessing that over the six times he ran for Senate, most of the interesting stuff was covered.
By contrast, wouldn't Palin require more reporting? Hardly anyone even knew who she was.
While I certainly like to imagine that there are a lot energetic, enterprising reporters out there just dying to tackle the really tough stories and if they have a flaw, it's neglecting the story they can file from their desks, by and large, there aren't.
Let's stop play-acting. The vast majority of old-media employees wanted Obama to win and consciously or unconsciously slanted their coverage towards that end. That's the way it is, and it's unlikely to change any time soon. Republicans: deal with it and stop whining. Democrats: either gloat or deny, but stop doing both.
Well this was predictable. They burned their credibility during the election and now they're trying to bring it back.
No thanks.
Look, McCain ran a bad and disorganized campaign and annointed an unqualified ignoramus has his running mate in order to get the social conservative base excited. In light of this, why would we want to see as many negative stories about Obama as about McCain?
I understand that many here view Obama as even more flawed than McCain. That's fine, even though imho wrong. But without settling this question, there seems to be little point in arguing about media bias.
No, the assumption is not that reporting on Joe Biden would have been too easy; the assumption is that both the press and the public are already reasonably familiar with Biden, who has been a Senator since 1972, serves in prominent roles in the Senate, and has twice run for President, than with Palin, who was unknown outside of Alaska.
Palin is every bit if not more qualified for the Presidency than the man elected. He has been a student newspaper editor, a community organizer, and a senator mostly voting present.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, &pfpp
Sorry, but only you and Bill Kristol are drinking that kool-aid.
"Lord, this isn't the WAPO I knew..."
-her column and a metro card will get you on the "C" train.
"familiarity" for the public equals boring for the reporter, and his editor. If editors are unlikely to rerun the same story, why would reporters keep writing it?
This article is along the same lines. I list several cases of the WaPo lying, misleading, and/or smearing for Obama here.
Not nationally, though.
Since when is LA Times "liberal"?
I didn't express any opinion as to whether there was a "need" to cover Biden. I was saying that it's easy to see why journalists and editors would consider stories about Palin (pro or con) to be "news" while stories about Biden (pro or con) were not. Especially television journalists.
I would be more than willing to entertain the idea of this being actual logic, but for the fact that Palin's detractors read the lies, didn't read the corrections, and have no idea how popular she was in Alaska. They believe the stuff about the rape kits; she wasn't exonerated from the ridiculous TaserGate scandal until the day before the election; she had an 80-90% approval rating, and 75% of Democrats - her political opponents! - thought that she was doing a good job in Alaska; her work with the pipeline ended 30 years of inaction; and, of course, her pre-gubernatorial jobs weren't limited to sportscasting and mayorships.
We all know that Palin spent six years to get through college. What most people don't know is that, in addition to being a star athlete in high school, she was an honours student (and on her school's honour society). IIRC, she was PBK or similar at one of her colleges, before she left (in part for financial reasons). What no one bothers to mention is that Joe Biden graduated near the bottom of his class at University of Delaware (550ish out of 650ish, IIRC) and something like 76 out of 85 at a second-rate law school. Academic all-star he is not, but everyone focused on the fact that Sarah Palin didn't get through college in four years and entered a beauty pageant to help pay for it.
If Palin's detractors had a clue, yeah, it would make sense to say that the coverage is based, in part, on relative merit. When you actually compare the candidates, their records, and their accomplishments with each other and with the image presented in the media, it becomes clear that the press gave itself the job of running Palin into the ground, reality be damned.
Consider me someone still waiting for one of the Obama-supporting Palin-haters to possess actual knowledge about her background, and give a coherent argument as to why she's not qualified for VP while their guy should be running the largest corporation on earth.
Did we ever get a reason why all the missing documents, i.e., medical records, transcripts, thesis or birth certificate, were not worth following up on?"
This is pretty silly stuff, particularly since we are still waiting on the McCain and Palin medical records, which were much more revelant. Obama's birth certificate status was properly vouched for by the State of Hawaii. You will never be satisfied with the results. Do you think that you are entitled to see his transcripts or his thesis, or that anyone else in the electorate cares, except for Smokey and others who believe that Obama did not really perform well in college? This election depended on his thesis? Wow.
Newspapers are liberal.
Reading is liberal.
©2008 Cheaper Trolls™
As for RPT's comments, I believe Palin's medical records were released.
Obama's birth certificate status was properly vouched for by the State of Hawaii.
Not really: 24ahead.com/blog/archives/008271.html
Why wouldn't the press jump on all his serial gaffes? Well, I think just because he's been in the Senate 35+ years, they think he's got to be smart, plus, he speaks forcefully even when he knows nothing of what he's talking about. The MSM never needs to examine a "foreign policy expert" who forcefully states France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and NATO should step up its efforts in the Middle East. Sad, sad, sad. Is it any wonder the newspapers are going under?
I agree. It makes the bias even more dramatic: the less qualified, more corrupt team should have received the majority of the negative coverage.
/HUMOR_ON
Maybe the Washington Post is trying to tell us that Joe Biden is the "goatse.cx" man ???
/HUMOR_OFF
SFW ... The link goes to the Wikipedia Article not to the 'real' goatse.cx
Oh sure. Everbody knows about Biden. My wife is 7 years younger than I, and was in high school in 1988. Until I mentioned Biden's plagiarism several weeks ago, she was utterly unaware of it. Sure, the info was out there. But it certainly wasn't anything the MSM was going to draw attention to, lest younger people find out something distasteful about the foreign policy "expert." Wonder whether plagiarism by Palin would have been airbrushed...
The Post's very slanted story about Obama's Tax Cuts basically laid the ground work for smearing McCain on the "Obama will raise Taxes" ads. It was a front-page story too, and one the critical maneuvers to break McCain's post nomination momentum.
The greater probem is that there only three constitional requirements to be President that the canddate has personal resonsibility for:
"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States."
We now have a situation where a President-Elect has not provided proof of the most basic qualification to be President.
Those who have raised this issue have been ridiculed by political parties and in the media and in the blogosphere.
However, do we really want the SCOTUS having to decide the constituninality of sitting someone who does not meet the requirementslaid down in the constitution. Do we want the Congress enacting a quick Constitional amendment to solve this problem?
The media did not take the most basic steps of reprising Biden's history of plagiarism and serious mistatements. Nor did the media keep the public informed of Biden's mistatements and outright lies during the debate and on the campaign trail.*
This is news.
Isn't Obama's lifetime of smoking and one-time use of hard drugs a relevant reason to want to see his actual medical records?
Is this an attempt at minimization. I have not heard that he minimized his use of illegal drugs to one time.
WaPo, frankly, is no worse than any other media organ in its political coverage. Which is to say it earned no more than a "c-" grade in this Presidential election cycle.
But if you're looking for bias at the Post, there are even worse I find the WaPo coverage of controversial local issues to be a lot more facially biased than
Just wanted to point out that WaPo's LOCAL coverage is significantly less disciplined than its national coverage. I suspect that's probably due to having younger, less-well-paid and generally lower-quality reporters and editors on its Metro beat. Also probably not a unique problem with the WaPo.
Final thought: Remember the political demographic of the core of WaPo's readership: 93% of D.C. voted Dem for Pres, and clear majorities of both the Maryland and Virginia suburban circulation areas did too. They're writing for a particular audience. Sad, but a fact of life...
Did you know that “ombudsmen” originated in Sweden? Yeah. It's true—check it out. And you know Sweden is a socialist country.
So, I'll let you in on little secret: Ombudsmen are a socialist plot.
You need more proof than their Swedish origin? How many ombudsmen do you find on AM talk radio? Huh?
There you go. You betcha.
©2008 Cheaper Trolls™
One consequence: the tax burden in Sweden is much more proportional than it is in the US.
Or she's right.
add to the list the idiots who are parroting the lie that Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent.
Rubbish.
William Bunch.
Now Howell.
Getting harder and harder to deny. Since the folks who had a dog in the fight--or who had a lot to gain by not being found out--are admitting it.
They might have had an attack of conscience.
Or they may have decided that they spent their credibility wisely, since, with Obama and some form of Fairness Doctrine, in action if not in name, they're saved. Nothing the proles can do about it now.
If you look at the op-ed space usage in the Post I dare say there was a finger on the scale favoring conservatives.
Never heard any of this self-searching criticism in 2000 or 2004 when press coverage was significantly more "skewed." Who invented that internet? Who didn't deserve his purple hearts?
Sour grapes still are going to make a drinkable wine.
Yes.
Negative coverage is writing anything negative about a candidate, or the candidate's position, or the candidate's campaign, or the candidate's anything at all. Negative coverage is negative coverage. Bad words are bad words.
Sheesh. What's so hard to understand about working the refs? It's as American as baseball.
The media is lucky people aren't out there really screaming at them, “Kill the Ump!”
What a stupid question. Have an apple pie in the face, ya idiot.
©2008 Cheaper Trolls™
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