Press Takes a Harder Look at Obama - and Itself

If Hillary Clinton last week wanted to work the refs—or argue with the press to generate more skeptical coverage of Barack Obama and maybe change the subject from her own problems—the evidence suggests it worked.

One of the more memorable moments last week occurred during the Feb. 26 debate, when Clinton—referencing a Saturday Night Live sketch—suggested the media had gone soft on Obama. (“If anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’” the New York Senator noted, “maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.”)

With no primary contests to consume press attention, Clinton’s charges of a pro-Obama tilt reverberated in the media echo chamber last week. Obama’s life and record came under a heightened degree of scrutiny, with everything from his legislative career to his ties to Louis Farrakhan to his African attire getting a public airing. Obama was the top campaign newsmaker and a significant or dominant factor in 69% of the stories from Feb. 25-March 2, a period between the Feb 19 Wisconsin primary and the March 4 tests in Texas and Ohio. That was the highest level of coverage for any candidate in 2008. And part of it was news outlets—from Good Morning America to The New York Times—engaged in introspective inquiry aimed at answering this headline atop one Feb. 29 newspaper story: “Are the media giving Obama a free ride?”

Clinton finished second in the derby for media exposure last week, registering as a significant or dominant figure in 58% of the campaign stories, a high water mark for her as well. And after weeks of tough coverage, Clinton may been relieved last week to find the media narrative focused more on her attacks on Obama than her 11-contest losing streak since Super Tuesday.

Last week’s campaign coverage also reflected what has become a one-party nomination fight. With the GOP battle widely considered over, Democrats generated more than four times the coverage of Republicans (68% to 15%). Presumptive Republican nominee McCain was at 28%, his lowest total in five weeks and a 10-point drop from last week. With McCain’s nomination a virtual certainty, his coverage last week took some strange detours. That included his high-profile repudiation of a conservative talk host who launched a vitriolic assault on Obama and the mini-flap over whether McCain’s birthplace—the Panama Canal Zone—ran afoul of eligibility requirements for a U.S. President.

Mike Huckabee, who was written off by the media in the early stages of the campaign and again before his surprising Super Tuesday wins, appears to have been counted out for the third, and probably final, time by the press, registering at about 2%.

That means Huckabee generated less media attention last week than a candidate who never entered the race. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s formal announcement that he was not running helped him register at 3%. That was about the same level of coverage (3%) that greeted Ralph Nader’s decision to make his fifth consecutive bid for the White House.

And no doubt to the frustration of his devoted followers, one other GOP candidate who has not yet dropped from the race failed to attract the media’s attention. Ron Paul, the Texas Congressman, generated zero coverage as measured by PEJ’s Index last week, marking at least the seventh straight week he has finished with less than 1% of coverage.

Even with the Democrats getting extensive attention, the focus away from the GOP is a major reason why the campaign accounted for its lowest share of the weekly newshole (38%) in 2008, according to the News Coverage Index from Feb. 25-March 2. (The previous low was 39%.) Again, cable TV—which devoted 59% of its time to the subject last week—was the media sector most interested in the election.

The Campaign Coverage index, which will appear weekly until nominees are selected in each party, is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI.

In the good coverage and the bad for Clinton last week, the portrayal was consistent—a fiery candidate in full combat mode.

A Feb. 25 report by CNN’s Candy Crowley on the increasingly tough tactics included video of a Clinton speech suggesting that Obama might not be better prepared for the presidency than the current White House occupant. “The unkindest cut of all, a comparison to George Bush” observed Crowley. The next day, on ABC’s Good Morning America, correspondent Jake Tapper explored the controversy over the photo that surfaced of Obama wearing traditional African garb, with the Obama campaign blaming the Clinton campaign and the Clinton team denying any knowledge of the photo. “The stakes are very high and the fight is getting nasty,” was Tapper’s evaluation.

The next morning featured a debate post-mortem on CBS’s “Early Show,” with Bob Schieffer critiquing Clinton’s performance, which included her complaint that she always gets the first question, “The one who showed up [to debate Obama] was the Hillary Clinton who was mad as the dickens,” Schieffer said. “She had steam coming out of her ears.”

Toward the week’s end, the big newsmaker was Clinton’s dramatic and edgy “3 a.m.” TV ad, which argued that she, rather than Obama, was the candidate prepared to receive a middle-of-the-night phone call about a global crisis. (The spot included images of young children sleeping soundly in their beds as the hot spot flared up.) ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, remarking on the ad’s attempt to deliver a gut-grabbing visceral message to voters, opined that “this is really the last argument for Senator Clinton.”

Two converging factors may have contributed to the tenor of Obama coverage last week—the Clinton campaign’s increasing complaints about media bias and journalists’ sense that with Obama now a clear frontrunner, the time was nigh for a more thorough scrubbing. It is also possible, as well, that the narrative about a faltering Clinton campaign had become familiar.

The Feb. 25 edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured Terry Moran’s analysis of Obama’s record in the Illinois State Senate, which included some substantive achievements and the 129 “present” votes on various bills. “Former colleagues say the picture is mixed,” said Moran. Three nights later, Dean Reynolds’ CBS report went much deeper, looking at everything from Obama’s Illinois career and performance in the U.S. Senate to his relationship with Louis Farrakhan (whose support Obama has rejected) and continuing whispers that he is a Muslim.

“Questions persist about Barack Obama’s identity, who he really is,” declared Reynolds.

When the media weren’t vetting Obama’s record, they were questioning their own treatment of him.

That was the topic on the Feb. 28 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, when Diane Sawyer asked: “Have all of us in the media used boxing gloves on Clinton and kid gloves on Obama? Have we been unfair?” Two days later, a New York Times story on the same subject stated that “questions over whether reporters were giving each candidate an equally fair shake were thrust into the center of the campaign itself. There were already indications that Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates were finding traction in casting the news media as a conflicted umpire, while prompting some soul-searching among the reporters themselves.”

Sooner or later in any mega-story, the performance of the media emerges as a major angle. With a breather in the primary schedule, that’s clearly what happened last week. The problem is that it’s much easier to pose a question about media bias than to answer it convincingly and credibly.

Next to the campaign, the U.S. economy—staggering under more negative indicators, and stock market plunges—was the second-biggest story last week, filling 7% of the newshole as measured by the News Coverage Index for Feb. 25-March 2. That was followed by the conflict in Afghanistan (3%), where the news that England’s Prince Harry had been stationed there was the driving factor. Next came events inside Iraq (3%) and the Academy Award ceremonies, also at 3%.

– Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Media Exposure by Candidate

Top Overall Stories of the Week

Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.

Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index

Popularity: 2% [?]

a very influential coterie with a peculiar “community interest” do NOT want to have a genuine prog’ like BARACK OBAMA having a chance to influence FCC policy (or NON-policy, as it tends to be) - this fear will continue to manifest itself now, most unfortunately for the millions who this year have been given in some cases the first dose of “hope” they’ve ever experienced.

7 weeks of no Ron Paul coverage. I could cry conspiracy but then I am branded a nut case. The truth is statistics do not lie. Media coverage (0) is not related to the voting results of the last 7 weeks. Super Tuesday Ron had 15% to 27% of state votes.

John Q. Public, unless you are an Obama supportor, also believes the press, both print and TV, have failed the US public. You have caricatured one candidate about her hair, her ankles, her laugh, her voice, her marriage–all personal attacks that are subjective and more reflective of a still backward and dysfunctional society that believes women can be demeaned. You could have done the same with Mr. Obama’s big ears, skinny body, stuttering when not repeating a rehersed, memorized speech, muffled voice, and public blowing of his nose. If you engage in this type of coverage, it should be across the board. Since you are not covering facts or disseminating objective information with which the public can make an informed decision, I find it difficult to place my belief in the Fourth Rail of Democracy, the free press. This woman commands respect. If you cannot respect her because you have a mother complex or you do not like her, you need to treat her with respect because a huge number of Americans who are making this race so close respect her and by disrespecting her, you disrespect all of us. Thusly, having pissed off 1/2 of the population, what worth or credibility do you have in
“reporting” anything? You have turned your once noble profession into a third rate Public Relations Firm.

My blog today generated some strong responses - here it is:
The railroading begins
With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama facing a crucial day in their campaign to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, organised labour is having its day in the limelight. With no viable or independent alternative on the horizon, US union leaders still hitch their wagon to the Democratic Party in the hope that they will have some influence when and if their nominee occupies the White House.

In Ohio, one of the industrial heartlands of the country now hit by the impact of globalisation, just 14% of workers are organised in trade unions. The division is between the older, skilled and white collar unions like the American Federation of Teachers and the machinists’ union who support Clinton on the one side, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which draws considerable support from African Americans on the other.

Unions like the SEIU, the powerful Teamsters Union, Unite Here (hotel workers) and the United Food and Commercial Workers broke away from the AFL-CIO [TUC] in 2005 to form the Change to Win coalition. With a few exceptions most of the Change to Win unions support Obama, with some key industrial unions like the United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers remaining neutral. Most of the Change to Win unions see Obama’s ability to rise from obscurity and mobilise large numbers as an inspiration to breathe life into union recruitment, which, as in the UK, has been in general decline.

Surprisingly large numbers of Americans have become involved in political debate through the Clinton-Obama battle. Obama’s rhetoric, however empty most of the time, has given some expression to the underdog in American politics. Obama has cleverly crafted his politics to tap in to the disenchantment with the politics of the old establishment. In many states, Obama’s campaign seems to have come from nowhere to challenge Clinton’s veterans. Young first-timers as well as older volunteers are staffing offices in obscure towns, using laptops and the Internet to co-ordinate the campaign and mobilise support.

But we’d better not get carried away by the image-makers. Despite his claim to being a new broom that will sweep clean, there is no way Obama will truly challenge the real power behind the presidency in the United States. He has no intention of overturning the military-industrial complex behind Bush and his global wars.

Yet we can already feel the railroading into supporting the Democrats coming on. It’s sobering to observe how an anti-corporate campaigner like author Naomi Klein takes it for granted that Guardian readers will back Obama, making bleating pleas that he should use his campaign to stand up against “islamophobia” and take seriously his mission to “repair the world”.

The one candidate who has consistently challenged the corporations, Ralph Nader, is already under fire from liberals like Joshua Holland of the AlterNet Independent Media Institute. After demonstrating that – counter to Democratic Party propaganda - Nader was not responsible for handing over victory to Bush in Florida or elsewhere in 2000, and that he has the right to run, Holland then goes on to say that he won’t be voting for him, on the grounds that as an “independent liberal”, he needs to “beat down the reactionary right”. Another supposedly independent thinker, Timothy Noah of Slate takes a similar stance, saying that he disagrees with Nader that the Democrats and Republicans are too similar.

To say that we know the Democrats are grim but the Republicans are even grimmer is a truly hopeless political perspective. It seeks to force voters to remain within the two-party cycle, where Tweedledum and Tweedledee take turns in running the country on behalf of corporate power. After all, it was the Clinton presidency that opened the door for Bush and it is the Democrats who in Congress, despite their majority in both houses, sit on their hands and allow Bush free rein. As Nader once said, if the Democrats are indeed the lesser of two evils, they are still evil!

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win
4 March 2008

Oh for Pete’s sake! The media is finally looking into whether it’s biased? C’mon, you should be ashamed of the blatant pandering to and coddling of one candidate over another. If Sen. Obama is the “Golden Child” and present media darling after having less than one third of a US Senate term under his belt, I’d like to offer my services as Secretary of State. I’m guessing I’d be just as qualified. Sen Clinton may be a bit strident and eliciting a knee-jerk anti-Clinton reaction, but she has earned the right to be where she is and should not be diminished by the bias being practiced by the mainstream media. So much for fair and impartial reporting, it’s sickening. The idea that a black man can run for president is not a new idea, and I agree he’s the best prospect I’ve seen in all my voting years, but I don’t see how he should be fawned over and Sen. Clinton lionized.
Get real, if the media has any credibility left, let it prove it by showing an equal amount of critical questioning and issue related reporting. Enough of the love fest for Obama, you’re all making me sick.

Yes, with careful manipulation of public opinion, another election has been stolen. This may not actually meet the technical definition of vote fraud but the truth remains self- evident as seen in the results. Now the complicit media has the audacity to pretend to question its own role and motives. Its high time the American public demand the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule from the FCC and Congress. The alternative, which has already begun, is that the public stops depending on mainstream media moguls to present their own versions of reality and bias, and will, for the sake of genuine truth, turn instead to other avenues of information. (Good riddance to bad rubbish.) Wake up America and reclaim your lives and liberties!