Ewww...more tl;dr from alcyone
Bias is another interesting aspect of the elections (which are clearly my current object of obsession).
This meanders somewhat off topic, but I have a point related to the interview, I promise! Or something...
So
this finding surprised me. Being super skeptical, I dug around and it seems like though the CMPA calls itself non-partisan, it's been criticized from the left. Also note that it runs until July 2008, which makes it recent and yet:
Barack Obama is getting more negative coverage than John McCain on TV network evening news shows, reversing Obama’s lead in good press during the primaries, according to a new study by Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). The study also finds that a majority of both candidates’ coverage is unfavorable for the first time this year. According to CMPA President Dr. S. Robert Lichter, “Obama replaced McCain as the media’s favorite candidate after New Hampshire. But now the networks are voting no on both candidates.”
Totally counterintuituve to me.
But
the database org, LexisNexis challenges the notion of bias too. This is it's methodology and what it looks at:
LexisNexis maintains what it calls the Media Coverage Sentiment Index, which parses news coverage across multiple media formats with an algorithm trained to search for certain phrases and interpret verbal constructions to assign the story a rating of "positive," "neutral" or "negative."
[...]
The index examines news reports across newspapers, magazines, Web sites, television and radio.
This one runs from July to August, it's recent as well. The main findings are:
Looking at...when speculation about Obama's running mate announcement on the eve of the Democratic convention was on its own enough to fill a 24-hour news cycle, Obama received 47 percent more coverage than McCain, according to LexisNexis. But even in the midst of that feeding frenzy, the sentiment index broke out as follows:
Stories about each candidate that were rated positive: Obama 33 percent; McCain 36 percent.
Stories rated neutral: Obama 38 percent; McCain 32 percent.
LN's data pool is around 2,000+, I believe.
Note, however, that online landscape is skewed by left blogs, according to Nielsen (but that's nothing new). Annyway
this person\'s analysis for example, is much more intuitive, imo.
He is associated with Fox and finds some similarities with LN in his views of Palin articles just after she got nominated, although his data sample is much smaller. He's also doing his analysis by hand, so to speak.
To supplement the above, there's
the Chicago Tribune , which quotes another LexisNexis study. This one looks at 6,000 articles on Palin and finds(the same study is quoted in Editor & Publisher):
Based on 6,027 stories analyzed, LexisNexis found that 26 percent were positive, 22 percent negative and 52 percent neutral.
I should point out, the last one has a "so far" attached (No Media Bias Against Palin, GOP--
So Far). That analysis was limited to last week and the writer is careful in pointing out how quickly that could change.
Maybe the Gibson interview indicates it has?
I'm still mulling all this over, it's been fun, but
alcyone
