Media Matters by Jamison Foser

Media Matters: The media's Minnesota debacle

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:38:07 EST

With only about 200 votes out of nearly 3 million cast separating Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken, the race is headed to a recount.

Naturally, conservative radio hosts are working themselves into a lather, baselessly accusing Democrats of trying to "steal" the election. That shouldn't surprise anyone. But NBC and The New York Times have also pushed the dubious notion that the Minnesota recount has been plagued by chaos and impropriety.

Here's how Meredith Vieira, co-host of NBC's Today, began a report on the Minnesota recount: "If you thought the election debacle in Florida could never happen again, wait until you see the situation in Minnesota."

This is nonsense. The "debacle" in Florida wasn't that there was a recount; the "debacle" was an absurdly designed ballot that led to thousands of people who meant to vote for Al Gore voting for Pat Buchanan instead. The "debacle" was that thousands of voters were improperly purged from voter rolls. The "debacle" was that the state's electoral votes were awarded to the candidate for whom fewer voters attempted to cast ballots. None of those factors are present in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Senate race is simply in the midst of a recount. Recounts happen. They aren't the illegitimate, anything-goes street fights the media pretend they are; they are a part of how elections work, their process written into law and executed every year. They are necessary, for a perfectly obvious reason: They make it more likely that the candidate who receives the most votes takes office. That is an unequivocally good thing.

During that Today segment, reporter Lee Cowan announced that the situation "has some remembering shades of Florida, of butterfly ballots and hanging chads. There are neither of those here."

What possible reason could there be for bringing up "butterfly ballots and hanging chads," given that "there are neither of those" present in Minnesota? Whatever the intent, the effect is clear -- it creates the impression that the situation in Minnesota is utter chaos, a "debacle" in the making.

Cowan continued: "Still, ballots have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, including some found unsecured in an election worker's car."

That appears to be completely false. Election officials have said the ballots did not "suddenly appear[] out of nowhere," and they were not "unsecured." The claim about unsecured ballots in a car appears to have originated with Norm Coleman's lawyer. Cowan did not attribute the car story to anyone or anything, he simply asserted it as fact. Adopting and repeating Coleman's lawyer's claims as though they are facts is bad enough. What makes it worse is that the lawyer had already backed off the claim. Two full days before Cowan's report, the Coleman lawyer had been quoted saying that "we've heard enough from the city attorney to let go of this. It does not appear that there was any ballot-tampering, and that was our concern."

So Cowan offered a sensational and -- by his own acknowledgement -- wholly irrelevant comparison to the "butterfly ballots and hanging chads" of the 2000 recount. Then he made a false assertion of ballots materializing out of thin air, and of unsecured ballots -- an assertion that seems to have been based entirely on the already-retracted claims of a Coleman campaign lawyer.

Vieira concluded the segment by referring to the "mess in Minnesota." But there is no mess. There is simply a recount -- a recount that does not involve butterfly ballots or hanging chads, a recount that, despite the best efforts of Vieira and Cowan to convince us otherwise, has not a thing in common with the "debacle" in Florida. Just a simple recount.

Today's New York Times similarly promoted the idea of chaos and impropriety in the Minnesota recount -- without actually providing any evidence or examples. The Times reported:

If Fritz Knaak has his way, Mr. Franken will never have a shot at solving those problems. A lawyer hired by Mr. Coleman expressly for the recount, Mr. Knaak described himself as "the new gun with the shiny pistol." Citing suspicion over what he called a series of "shenanigans" that have narrowed Mr. Coleman's lead, he has requested the official paper tape with the number of ballots and the time stamp printed out by each ballot machine, in every voting precinct.

The Times gave no examples of "shenanigans" or any indication of who is "suspicious" that such "shenanigans" have occurred. Nor did it give any indication that it asked Knaak for examples of either shenanigans or suspicion.

Later in the article, the Times reported:

Mr. Coleman's campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, accused the Franken campaign of "a brazen, last minute act of desperation," by asking Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, to reconsider 461 rejected absentee ballots.

Mr. Franken's lead lawyer, Marc Elias, called such assertions of ballot stuffing "fanciful and bogus."

But there were no "assertions of ballot stuffing" -- none the Times reported, anyway. The Times simply quoted Coleman's campaign manager saying the Franken campaign's request to reconsider previously rejected ballots is an indication of "desperation." That's quite different from making an allegation of "ballot stuffing."

Then the Times reported that Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten expressed concerns about the ability of Minnesota's Democratic secretary of state, Mark Ritchie, to act impartially during the recount, without indicating Kersten's own political leanings. As Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert explained, "Kersten is a right-winger who smeared Franken right before Election Day as a 'slanderer of Christianity.' "

Next, the Times quoted a "Republican researcher" who is "very, very concerned" about Ritchie. Then it quoted Sean Hannity saying "[f]ishy business" is occurring in Minnesota, where Democrats and elections officials are "up to no good." To what "[f]ishy business" was Hannity referring? Were his allegations legitimate? The Times did not say.

Finally, the Times quoted the Facebook status of "Noah Rouen, 34," a Minnesota man on a pheasant hunt who, along with his friends, "could not help but hatch a conspiracy theory."

If it seems the Times is desperate to find people concerned about the legitimacy of the Minnesota recount -- resorting to quoting vague allegations from hard-right partisans like Sean Hannity and Facebook conspiracy theories -- maybe that's because Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota's Republican governor, says there is "no actual evidence that there's been any fraud or problems." (That quote didn't appear in the Times article; maybe it got cut to make room for the pheasant hunter's Facebook status.) And as Media Matters noted, the Times did not note that Pawlenty said that the bipartisan state canvassing board Ritchie appointed to oversee the recount was "fair" and that a lawyer for Coleman's campaign reportedly said that the "state should feel good about who's on the panel."

The news media's tendency to compare any recount to the "butterfly ballots and hanging chads" made famous during Florida's 2000 recount, and to breathlessly report the merest rumor of impropriety, is not merely lazy and absurd and sensationalist. It is also dangerous. It causes people to be frightened and concerned about all recounts -- to be wary of the very concept of recounts. But recounts needn't be like the "debacle" of 2000; in fact, they rarely are. They are far more frequently the best way to ensure that errors in counting do not result in the candidate who received fewer votes taking office. (Indeed, in 2004, a manual recount in the Washington governor's race reversed the results of the initial Election Day tabulations and machine recount.) Sensational and baseless reporting like that produced this week by NBC and The New York Times runs the risk of undermining public confidence in an essential part of the democratic process.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters: All over but the lying

Fri, 7 Nov 2008 20:25:53 EST

On Tuesday, Americans chose as their next president an African-American named Barack Obama who campaigned on a near-universal health-care plan, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and a move away from the belligerent foreign policy of the past eight years. Republicans, and some journalists, had spent months (falsely) saying Obama is the single most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -- and maybe even a socialist. The American people responded by electing him in a landslide.

This, naturally, is very good news for the Republicans, according to many pundits. It proves once again that America remains a "center-right" nation.

Right about now, you're probably scratching your head, wondering how the election of the "most liberal" member of the Senate, a man who campaigned on a promise of near-universal health care, could possibly be described as evidence of a conservative country.

To be sure, it requires some creative thinking.

NBC's Tom Brokaw, for example, looked at county-by-county election results and concluded that counties carried by John McCain account for greater land mass than those carried by Barack Obama. This would be meaningful, if only fields and streams and rocks and trees were conservative voters. But they aren't: They are fields and streams and rocks and trees. They are neither liberal nor conservative; they tell us nothing about the nation's political leanings. People tell us something about the nation's leanings -- and more people voted for Barack Obama.

Then there's CNN's John King Wednesday night. Just try to follow his logic:

KING: Without a doubt, the electorate voted for Barack Obama, but still perceives him to be a liberal. And one thing you don't want to do when you win an election like this, a sweeping election like this, is alienate the people here in a place like Cincinnati. Why? George W. Bush carried that county four years ago. You don't want to drive them away.

[...]

So, Barack Obama is making inroads in communities that not too long ago voted Republican. The last thing you want to do if you want to keep them four years from now is to alienate them with a liberal agenda.

That simply does not make any sense. John King says Barack won a "sweeping election" even though the electorate "perceives him to be a liberal" -- so he better not pursue a "liberal agenda" or he will "alienate them."

Got that?

Later that same night, King added that Obama "does not get a mandate to be a liberal." Again, this is pure nonsense. John King says voters perceive Obama to be a liberal. John King says Obama won a "sweeping victory." And yet John King says that Obama's sweeping victory among an electorate that considers him a liberal does not constitute a mandate to be a liberal. This is illogical, self-discrediting foolishness.

At least King was considerate enough to debunk his own absurd conclusions in near-real time. Conservatives making similar claims were not so kind.

Media Research Center president Brent Bozell -- who does not get nearly the recognition he deserves for being one of the most clownish figures in the conservative movement -- took to Fox News to announce that Obama had won by campaigning as a "Reaganite" and a "fiscal conservative."

Couple of problems with that claim.

First, Bozell didn't explain what he meant by "fiscal conservative," but its typical meaning -- supportive of restrained spending and balanced budgets -- is so far removed from the actual governing performance of actual conservatives that the phrase ought to be retired from use.

Second, Bozell's claim that Obama won as a "Reaganite" is a little odd, given that it wasn't that long ago that conservatives were saying Obama was campaigning on a "redistribution of wealth" that constituted "socialism." And when I say "conservatives," I mean Brent Bozell. And by "it wasn't that long ago," I mean last week.

(How much of a fraud is Bozell? In 1998, Bozell claimed the media weren't paying enough attention to Monica Lewinsky -- at a time when there were 500 news reports a day on the topic. Now he's alternately claiming Obama is a "socialist" and a "Reaganite." And in his column last week, he complained that a recent Project for Excellence in Journalism study overstated the extent of negative coverage of Obama by including "talk-radio hosts from Rush Limbaugh to Randi Rhodes" who are supposed to "express an opinion." But that complaint is completely false. The study in question specifically excluded talk radio. It's right there in the study's methodology: "Talk radio stories, which are part of PEJ's regular NCI, were not included in this campaign study of tone." If Brent Bozell tells you the sun is shining, you better grab an umbrella.)

It isn't hard to figure out why Brent Bozell makes absurd claims about Obama winning as a "Reaganite" -- he's an ideologue with far greater commitment to his agenda than to the truth.

But why would Tom Brokaw and John King and Newsweek and countless other Beltway journalists and pundits continue to say things like "America remains a center-right country" and insist that Barack Obama's clear victory does not constitute a mandate for the progressive policy positions he ran on?

It might have something to do with the long-held assumptions of many journalists and pundits (and more than a few progressives) that progressives are inherently politically weak and conservatives are inherently politically strong.

Three of the most foolish pieces of punditry of the past several years reflect such assumptions.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman announced in late 2005 that Democrats were justifiably "gloomy" about their electoral prospects. It seemed preposterous, given that President Bush's approval ratings were in the tank, his mishandling of Hurricane Katrina had enraged the nation, and Republicans in Congress were being fitted for orange jumpsuits by the dozen. Still, Fineman insisted, it was true: Democrats were in trouble. One reason? A "Lack of star power." Fineman explained: "it's incontestably true that the Democrats simply aren't blessed with much charisma in the leadership ranks." The 200,000 people who stood in Chicago's Grant Park for Obama's victory speech would probably disagree. (Yes, Fineman said "leadership ranks," and Obama wasn't in the party "leadership" in 2005. But Fineman contrasted the Democrats' purported lack of "charisma" with Republicans who weren't, either, so that doesn't get him off the hook.)

Since Fineman argued that Democrats had good reason to be gloomy, they've picked up more than 50 House seats, 12 in the Senate, and the presidency. Republicans have won ... well, John Boehner has probably won a few rounds of golf, but that's about it.

Then there's NBC political director Chuck Todd. Shortly before the 2006 elections, Todd predicted that if Democrats won control of Congress, President Bush's approval rating would be above 50 percent by the following July. Democrats did win control of Congress -- and Bush's approval rating was at 30 percent the following July. And at this point, Bush wouldn't be above 50 if you added his approval ratings in the last two CBS/New York Times polls together.

And finally, the dean of the Washington press corps, David Broder: In September 2005, Broder predicted that Bush's handling of Katrina would help him regain his standing with the public. Things didn't work out that way, as Broder eventually acknowledged, but he continued to predict a Bush resurgence. In early 2007, Broder announced that "President Bush is poised for a political comeback."

It isn't just that these three predictions were wrong; people make incorrect forecasts all the time. Many of those incorrect predictions are based on reasonable analysis that just turns out to be wrong. But it has been pretty clear since mid-2005 that the Bush administration has been a spectacular failure, that the public has rejected the disastrous conservative policies President Bush had used to drive the nation into a ditch. There hasn't been any reason to believe the Republicans would rebound, other than blind faith. And that isn't something that is clear only in hindsight: It has been obvious for years.

Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the past five presidential elections. When the new Congress is sworn in, they will hold more than 250 seats in the House and at least 57 in the Senate. Public polling shows -- and has shown for quite some time -- that Americans back progressive solutions to the nation's problems. The current progressive ascendancy won't last forever, of course. But it's about time for the Beltway pundit crowd to let go of their tired old assumptions about the relative strength of the parties and the ideological leanings of the country. Unless, of course, they enjoy making fools of themselves.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters: The Right's "bias" charade

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:22:30 EST

At the end of the 1992 presidential campaign, there was a flurry of news reports about the possibility that the media had favored Bill Clinton over incumbent George H.W. Bush, and that the media's coverage of the race helped Clinton win.

Such complaints might seem a little odd, given the media's relentless focus during that campaign on Clinton's alleged relationship with Gennifer Flowers, his youthful marijuana use, and his purported "draft-dodging."

Still, complaints from conservatives about the media's coverage of the 1992 campaign worked to their benefit by complimenting their campaign to undermine Clinton's "legitimacy" as president. And they caused reporters, always sensitive to (typically bogus) charges of biased reporting, to bend over backwards to disprove their critics -- an instinct that, no doubt, contributed to the absolutely brutal media coverage Clinton received almost immediately upon his election.

How brutal? How quickly? The Los Angeles Times explained in a 1993 look back at the earliest days of the Clinton presidency:

Twelve days after President Clinton took office -- with only 1,448 days left in his term -- Sam Donaldson of ABC News was on a weekend talk show, saying, "This week we can talk about, 'Is the presidency over?' "

That same day, a Page 1 story in the Los Angeles Times warned, "The President must tighten his grip or risk disaster."

Later that week, a Page 1 story in the New York Times said, "The President desperately needs a victory, as soon as possible."

And that was barely six months in to Clinton's first term. Sure, by then reporters had suggested Clinton's presidency was over before it reached the end of its second week and inaccurately obsessed over his Air Force One haircut. But they were just getting started; the wall-to-wall coverage of Whitewater and countless other trumped-up faux scandals was still to come.

But no matter how hostile, how relentlessly negative, how scandal-obsessed the media were in their coverage of Clinton, conservatives kept right on going with their complaints of liberal bias. On October 26, 1996, The New York Times reported:

Sounding like a crusader, Bob Dole implored his audiences today to "rise up" against the nation's news organizations, which he said were protecting the Clinton Administration ...

"We've got to stop the liberal bias in this country," he declared ... "Don't read that stuff! Don't watch television! You make up your mind! Don't let them make up your mind for you!"

[...]

At another point he asked: "When do the American people rise up and say, 'Forget the media in America! We're going to make up our minds! You're not going to make up our minds!' This is about saving our country!"

Singling out The New York Times for the second straight day, Mr. Dole went on: "We are not going to let the media steal this election. We're going to win this election. The country belongs to the people, not The New York Times."

[...]

Mr. Dole's complaints against the news media -- reminiscent of those by President George Bush in the waning days of his losing 1992 campaign -- are greeted with wild cheers. Mr. Dole said today that President Clinton would be losing the election if he was not "getting propped up by the media."

A Nexis search yields 539 hits for "Clinton and Whitewater" in the The New York Times between January 1 and October 26, 1996 -- nearly two per day. And that focus hardly let up as the campaign reached the home stretch; there are 42 hits for "Clinton and Whitewater" in the Times from October 1-26. Nor was the Times alone in hammering away at Whitewater during the fall campaign: Expanding the search to all news organizations yields 2,412 hits for the month of October alone.

And that's to say nothing of the relentless media focus on Democratic fundraising controversies. Or the various other Clinton "scandals," most of which turned out to exist only in the fevered imaginations of the news media. Or the fact that the news media, having obsessed for years about Clinton's infidelity, buried a story about an alleged Dole affair that his campaign aides considered a "mortal threat" threat to his candidacy.

Let's stop there for a second: Just weeks after The Washington Post, which had reported on allegations of infidelity on Clinton's part, spiked a story about an alleged Dole affair, Bob Dole was running around accusing the media of being in the tank for Clinton. That's awfully reckless behavior -- if Dole actually believed the media were against him. Sincere or not, Dole's complaints ring hollow; I can't think of a presidential candidate whose alleged "scandals" received more election-year coverage than Clinton's in 1996. Such coverage isn't the whole story, of course, but it's awfully hard to justify claims that the media were in the tank for Clinton when they were running so many reports about Whitewater and other such nonsense.

But Dole's wasn't the most absurd conservative claim of media bias during the Clinton years. For that, we have to look to the pro: Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center. On February 9, 1998, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an interview with Bozell in which he complained that the media weren't devoting enough coverage to the Monica Lewinsky story.

Given that most observers would likely agree that the Lewinsky saga involved the longest, most intense media feeding frenzy in modern American history, Bozell's claim should be self-evidently fraudulent.

On the off chance that it isn't: On February 9, the day the Bozell interview ran, there were 529 news reports mentioning "Clinton" and "Lewinsky," according to a search of the Nexis database. Those 529 hits include 59 television transcripts, eight hits in the New York Times folder, and 11 for USA Today. In just one day. And that was a typical day, not an unusual one.

Still, Bozell told the Star Tribune, apparently with a straight face, that the media had "stopped" covering the story -- "as they always do." Five hundred news reports a day, and Bozell thought the media had stopped covering the story. This is up-is-down, black-is-white, the-moon-is-made-of-green-cheese stuff. And it is typical of conservative media criticism.

Why do they make such absurd claims? Because it is clear that it works. (If, unlike many journalists, you understand what the goal is.)

Which brings us to 2008.

John McCain's campaign, and its conservative allies, have spent much of the year attacking the news media. No surprise there; that's what conservatives do, even conservatives who have been the beneficiaries of a decade of glowing, fawning coverage from swooning reporters.

McCain and his allies were attacking the media back in the Spring, when reporters were obsessively scrutinizing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- and openly acknowledging that they weren't giving McCain similar scrutiny. They attacked the media in late summer, when the media were breathlessly touting the "authenticity" of a Sarah Palin speech that was filled with falsehoods. And they have attacked the media throughout the fall, even as it has become clear that the scrutiny reporters promised back in the spring that they would eventually give McCain isn't coming. It isn't a coincidence that scrutiny never came: it is, in part, an obvious and intended result of the attacks McCain and his allies have been leveling on the media all year.

But if, as the polls suggest, Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, those attacks will have ultimately proven unsuccessful, right? Wrong.

First, that's a silly way to assess whether a strategy has "worked"; a candidate can derive benefit from a strategy without winning.

Second, it ignores the long-term goals of the attacks: to delegitimize an Obama presidency in the eyes of many Americans, and to browbeat journalists into covering an Obama administration much more critically than they otherwise would.

Whether those goals are met depends in part on whether journalists take the attacks seriously, or recognize them as the predictable continuation of a right-wing work-the-refs strategy that is so fraudulent it even involved claiming the media were devoting insufficient attention to Monica Lewinsky. And it depends in part on whether progressives push back on the bogus narrative that the media handed Obama the election, or simply ignore it.

Unfortunately, the conservative complaints got some superficial support from a recent study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) that claimed that John McCain has received much more "negative" coverage than Barack Obama during the campaign.

The PEJ study quickly got significant attention from the establishment media and blogs.

But while the study lends rhetorical support to the conservatives' arguments, it is nearly useless as an actual assessment of how the media covered the campaign.

First off, it is worth noting this little nugget about the study's methodology, buried at the end of the PEJ report: "Talk radio stories ... were not included in this campaign study of tone." PEJ offers no justification for the exclusion of talk radio. Not a word. In what surely must be a coincidence, talk radio skews further to the right than any other medium.

Now, here's PEJ's description of how it assesses whether a news report is "positive" or "negative":

To examine tone, the Project takes a particularly cautious and conservative approach. Unlike some researchers, we examine not just whether assertions in stories are positive or negative, but also whether they are inherently neutral. This, we believe, provides a much clearer and fairer sense of the tone of coverage than ignoring those balanced or mixed evaluations. Second, we do not simply tally up all the evaluative assertions in stories and compile them into a single pile to measure. Journalists and audiences think about press coverage in stories or segments. They ask themselves, is this story positive or negative or neutral? Hence the Project measures coverage by story, and for a story to be deemed as having a negative or positive tone, it must be clearly so, not a close call: for example, the negative assertions in a story must outweigh positive assertions by a margin of at least 1.5 to 1 for that story to be deemed negative.

OK ... anyone want to guess what that means in practical terms?

Unfortunately, the few actual examples of "positive" and "negative" coverage PEJ offers do little to clarify its methodology, and less to inspire confidence. For example, PEJ notes:

Some of that positive coverage was related to evidence that the financial crisis was aiding Obama. "Recent economic woes have given Democrat Barack Obama a clear lead over Republican John McCain," declared a story posted on AOL News on Sept. 24, citing a 9-point lead for Obama in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

That's what counts as "positive" coverage of Obama? A fairly straightforward report that a poll finds Obama in a "clear lead" over McCain? And, it seems, much of Obama's "positive" coverage consisted of reports like that:

The data clearly point in this direction for some of the explanation. Of those stories that focused mostly on polls, a clear majority (57%) were positive for Obama, while less than a quarter (23%) were negative. Similarly, stories about the electoral map, swing states and campaign strategy were even more favorable (77% positive vs. 6% negative). These represent the most positive element of Obama's coverage.

So, if a candidate is winning, and the polls show that, and the media report that the polls show the candidate winning, that counts as "positive" coverage. Well, OK, it's true that such a story is "positive," but it tells us nearly nothing about the media.

Examples of "negative" coverage of McCain similarly fail to illuminate. Here's the first:

On Sept. 24, he announced he was suspending campaigning to return to Washington to work on a rescue bill and advocated delaying the first debate, scheduled two days away in Oxford Mississippi. ... [S]ome of the coverage depicted McCain's decision-making in an unflattering light, such as a Sept. 26 CNN.com piece stating that "some fellow lawmakers said McCain hadn't contributed much to the financial debate, and senior campaign advisors told CNN they believed it was politically crucial that McCain show up in Oxford, Mississippi."

Actually, that's the only example of negative coverage of McCain. As Bob Somerby noted, "According to Pew, McCain has been hit with a bunch of 'negative stories' in the six weeks under review ... But what do these 'negative stories' look like? In the age of the simple electronic link, it's incredible that Pew provides no examples."

To PEJ's credit, it says only that coverage of the candidates is "positive" or "negative," not "favorable" or "unfavorable" or that coverage is "biased" in favor of a given candidate. As a literal matter, describing news reports such as the CNN.com example as "negative" is defensible, though it doesn't really tell us much.

But many people interpret those descriptions as evidence of "bias" -- as PEJ must know they will do. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, for example:

Critics, including many conservatives, say the media have been too easy on Obama, and bias cannot be discounted as a factor. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that from the end of the conventions through the debates, McCain's coverage was more than three times as negative than Obama's.

Such interpretations are simply not defensible. PEJ's explanation of its methodology suggests that a purely factual news report about McCain trailing in the polls constitutes a "negative" report -- as would a report debunking a McCain lie. Again, such a report could defensibly be described as "negative" for McCain, but interpreting that as evidence of media bias is absurd. Debunking a lie isn't "bias," it's what journalists should be doing every day.

PEJ made no effort to assess things that actually could give some indication of whether media coverage has been unfair - whether news reports were more likely to uncritically report false claims from one candidate, or whether similar controversies surrounding each candidate received disparate coverage, for example. (Media Matters has documented several such examples of double standards that have benefited McCain.)

PEJ did offer this intriguing statement:

Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments. In many ways, the arc of the media narrative during this phase of the 2008 general election might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted.

That seems to support my observation that the media have covered precisely what McCain wants them to cover:

The truth is that when John McCain says "jump," the media still ask, "How high?" Think about this: When was the last time McCain or his campaign has wanted the news media to focus on something, and they have refused? From "lipstick on a pig" to Bill Ayers, the media have scampered after whatever mud McCain has flung, like a puppy dog chasing a stick thrown by its master. Sure, sometimes they have pointed out that McCain is lying -- and that's tremendous progress for a profession that has spent a decade flatly asserting McCain's honesty. But -- as I've explained in the past -- even as they've debunked McCain's claims, they've too often privileged the lie by allowing those claims to drive their coverage.

Unfortunately, PEJ did not explain its assertion that "the media narrative ... might be best described as a drama in which John McCain has acted and Barack Obama has reacted." Examining that idea more fully could have actually told us something useful about whether the media have favored one candidate or the other, in effect, if not intentionally.

PEJ's analysis may have only limited academic value. But there's nothing academic about the need to rebut its flawed conclusions. If the media themselves perceive that Barack Obama benefited from favorable media coverage -- as is suggested by their uncritical citation of the PEJ study -- that perception could have ominous implications for the coverage he will receive if he becomes president.

As a 1993 Christian Science Monitor op-ed by a University of California-Irvine professor noted:

[H]ow the media treat a new president may have less to do with personality, personnel, perks, or pessimism than it does with how the media treated that president as a candidate. Treatment of a new president may be inversely related to their coverage of the president as a candidate for office. The easier the media's treatment of a presidential candidate during the campaign, the harsher will be their treatment once the candidate has become president. Conversely, harsher treatment of a presidential candidate during the campaign may precipitate a much longer media honeymoon for a new president.

Media Matters: The clouded wrath of the crowd

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:19:58 EST

As Election Day approaches, the right-wing media are becoming increasingly vitriolic and irrational.

Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Jerome Corsi, and others have attacked Barack Obama over his visit to his ailing grandmother.

On Monday, Savage responded to Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama by insisting, "The only people who don't seem to vote based on race are whites of European origin." Later in the week, Savage said welfare recipients shouldn't be allowed to vote. Fellow radio host Jim Quinn went a step further over the edge, declaring that there was "good reason" for allowing only landowners to vote.

A Washington Times columnist called Barack Obama a "Marxist" who believes that "murdering innocent babies ... is an inalienable right." ABC's The Note declared that little piece of overheated rhetoric a "must-read."

The creative conspiracy theorists over at WorldNetDaily claim that Obama "campaigned for" "radical Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga" during a 2006 trip -- a claim supposedly substantiated by obviously fake emails Jerome Corsi claims to have obtained. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that the emails are real, they still do not substantiate WND's claims -- in fact, they don't contain so much as a single statement of support for Odinga.

Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell compared Obama to Hitler, Mao and Jim Jones. What's the similarity? Well, they all spoke inspiringly of "change."

Believe it or not, that isn't the craziest Hitler comparison to ooze forth from the right-wing fever swamps in the past month. Bill O'Reilly recently declared that Nancy Pelosi practices her speeches too much, noting that Hitler also practiced speeches before delivering them (O'Reilly claimed he wasn't comparing Pelosi to Hitler. Right.)

For radio host Bill Cunningham, comparing Obama to Hitler doesn't go far enough. He prefers to suggest that Obama is the antichrist. (Cunningham has frequently peppered his comments about Obama with gratuitous references to the candidate's middle name, Hussein -- once embellishing by referring to "Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama.")

KSFO radio host Lee Rodgers falsely claimed that Obama has admitted that he would "stand with the Muslims" against "the Western world" -- a twisted fantasy reminiscent of Savage's claim to "doubt" that Obama "would take our side" in the event of a terrorist attack. Speaking of which: Two weeks ago, Savage announced that "[N]ot all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists happen to be Muslim." Just in case the bigotry and stupidity of that statement isn't obvious: Tim McVeigh wasn't a Muslim.

There is, in short, a lot of hate and venom spewing forth from right-wing media, particularly radio and blogs. The last time a Democrat was elected president, the right used that hate to mobilize opposition to him and his agenda. There's no reason to think the Rush Limbaughs of the world will react differently to an Obama presidency. The only question is whether the "mainstream" media will take their cues from the far-right hate merchants again -- and whether progressives will be more aggressive in fighting back.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters: Loose ends

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:31:16 EST

Finally, for the first time this year, a prominent media figure asked John McCain about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy last night.

The lack of media attention to the Liddy-McCain relationship is one of the clearest double standards in recent political history. McCain and the news media have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to Barack Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, yet until last night, McCain hadn't been asked a single question* about his ties to Liddy, a convicted felon who has instructed his listeners on how best to shoot law-enforcement agents. Liddy has held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and describes the Arizona senator as an "old friend"; McCain has said he is "proud" of Liddy.

Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had said he was "proud" of an "old friend" who urged people to shoot law-enforcement agents in the head. Do you think maybe he would have been asked a question or three about it? Do you think maybe there would have been more than the occasional passing mention in the news of the relationship? Of course there would have been.

Yet McCain hasn't been questioned about Liddy. The media have largely ignored the relationship, even while working themselves into a frenzy about Obama and Ayers. McCain's relationship with Liddy is obviously newsworthy in its own right, but coupled with his attacks on Obama over Ayers, it's a textbook case of hypocrisy -- exactly the sort of thing that political reporters supposedly drool over. But not when it's John McCain. When it's John McCain, the nation's leading news organizations band together in what is, in effect, a blackout of information that could be damaging to their longtime favorite.

Until last night, when McCain was finally asked, point-blank, about his relationship to Liddy and the similarities between that relationship and the Obama-Ayers relationship he has attacked so harshly.

Who finally asked the question? The New York Times? The Washington Post? CNN's "best political team on television"?

Nope.

David Letterman asked McCain about Liddy, putting the nation's journalists to shame in the process.

For years, political professionals, academics, and media watchdogs have lamented the fact that some Americans get their news from late-night comedians and other entertainment. As it turns out, that might be a good thing.

Unfortunately, after Letterman broke the media's embargo on questioning McCain's relationship with Liddy, reporters quickly pretended it never happened -- or, if they did mention it, downplayed the significance of the relationship. Time's Mark Halperin described Letterman "hound[ing]" McCain over his Ayers attacks, adding, "The late-night host doesn't let up on where the former Weather Underground leader fits into the campaign." But, inexplicably, Halperin didn't so much as mention that Letterman confronted McCain about his relationship with Liddy. Several news reports that did mention the Liddy exchange described him as a Watergate felon -- omitting Liddy's much more recent statements about shooting law enforcement personnel.

But the worst was MSNBC. This morning, the cable channel played a clip of McCain on Letterman -- but not the Liddy exchange. Then, immediately after the clip, MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall referenced the McCain attacks on Ayers. At no point did Hall mention Liddy.

* Or, if he has been asked, it hasn't been reported. Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman did ask McCain's campaign about Liddy back in the spring, but despite what reporters always claim about how open McCain is, Chapman didn't get a response.

Tax clarity

Two weeks ago, I wrote that too many news reports "simply repeat charges and counter-charges or obsess over minor details while failing to provide the big picture" and, in doing so, "obscure rather than clarify the candidates' proposals and positions." News reports about the candidates' tax plans, for example, often fail to make clear the most important facts: how much the plans cost, and how the cuts are distributed -- how much the typical middle-income taxpayer would save, how much a millionaire would save, etc.

Today's New York Times offers a perfect example. Reporting on the "plumber" John McCain referred to incessantly during Wednesday's debate, the Times purported to assess how he would fare under Barack Obama's tax plan.

Well, that's not quite right: The article didn't say a word about how the actual Joe Wurzelbacher would actually fare under Obama's tax plan. Instead, it focused on the effect Obama's tax plan would have on some hypothetical version of Joe Wurzelbacher who makes considerably more money than the actual Joe Wurzelbacher does.

The accompanying chart was even worse. It was titled "A Plumber's Tax Bill," but it didn't indicate how much the typical plumber would pay in taxes under Obama and McCain. Nor did it show how much an actual plumber would pay in taxes under Obama and McCain. Instead, it showed how much an imaginary plumber who is a partner in a two-person plumbing company that makes $280,000 a year after expenses would pay in taxes under the two candidates.

While The New York Times obscures the effects of the candidates' tax plans, last weekend's Parade magazine showed just how easy it is to get it right: "If your annual salary is less than $112,000, you'd pay less in taxes under Obama's plan; if your salary is higher, McCain would cut your taxes more." That took just 27 words -- 27 words that should be in every news report about the candidates' tax plans from now until Election Day. And Parade included an easy-to-read chart that showed how much people at various income levels would save under the two candidates' plans (or how much more they would pay, in the case of people making more than $227,000 a year).

Rehabbing McCain

Even while reporting critically on John McCain's campaign tactics over the past month or so, many Beltway journalists and pundits have been quick to assert that those tactics don't reflect the "real" McCain, or to bend over backward to suggest that he is not responsible for what his campaign is doing in his name. Last week, for example, David Gergen praised McCain for sending his staff and surrogates out to deliver the nastiest anti-Obama messages rather than doing it himself.

This week, two Time reporters enthusiastically threw themselves into the McCain reputation rehabilitation project. As Glenn Greenwald documented, Ana Marie Cox offered this defense of McCain:

COX: I think McCain in his heart of heart wants to win this fair and square. He wants to win this because he's the better candidate. He doesn't want to win this because people think Obama is a Muslim or is a terrorist or he's not really American. He wants to win this on his own merits. It upsets his sense of fair play -- to win -- to think that the support he's getting is because of what he thinks are bad reasons. . .

ANN ALTHOUSE: But in the last month or so, he's been losing ground, and resorting to this terrorist meme --

COX: I think that hasn't worked for them. I think they recognize that to the extent that that does work, that's not how McCain wants to win. I adore the guy. I think he's fantastic in many ways. I respect him, I admire his service to the country. I think ultimately he's very principled and, to coin a phrase, honorable. . . .

Never mind what John McCain has actually been saying and doing and what his campaign has been saying and doing: Ana Marie Cox is here to assure you that, in his heart of hearts, John McCain is an honorable and principled man with a sense of "fair play." Judge him not by his words, or his deeds -- judge him by what Ana Marie Cox thinks is in his heart!

Ana Marie Cox, by the way, is the "liberal" half of washingtonpost.com's "Both Sides" feature, in which she is paired with Tucker Carlson to provide Post readers a balanced "debate" of "the issues and latest developments." So "Both Sides" consists of a conservative ... and a liberal who "adores" John McCain. That isn't actual balance; that's Fox News "balance."

At least Cox makes clear that her defense of McCain is based not on what he has done, but on her reading of his heart. Her Time colleague Karen Tumulty announced yesterday that both campaigns are equally negative and pretended that her conclusion was based on actual data. It wasn't. The data Tumulty pointed to showed that just 26 percent of McCain's ads have been positive, compared to 39 percent (fully 50 percent more!) of Obama's.

You might be tempted to cut Tumulty some slack; the data she pointed to came from a statement by Ken Goldstein of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which concluded that "the tone of the McCain and Obama campaigns has been absolutely identical." So maybe Tumulty didn't read closely enough to see that the data demonstrated the falsity of Goldstein's conclusion. But when the actual data was pointed out (in reader comments on Time's website, and by me on Media Matters' blog), Tumulty said she would "go with Wisconsin on this" -- that is, she still agreed with Goldstein's claim that the "tone" of the campaigns has been "absolutely identical."

But this really isn't a matter of interpretation. Ken Goldstein's data shows that Barack Obama has run many more positive ads and that a much higher proportion of Obama's ads have been positive. That isn't interpretation: That's what the data says, right there in Ken Goldstein's press release. Therefore, it is simply false to say the "tone" of the two advertising campaigns has been "absolutely identical." There's no way around this: It's false. No matter how you look at it, 26 and 39 are not "identical." Choosing to "go with" Goldstein's claim is deliberately choosing to be wrong.

The only question is: Why would Karen Tumulty choose to be wrong? Is it because it makes McCain look better? Is it because she blindly accepts Ken Goldstein's claims, even when Ken Goldstein's data prove them to be false? Is it because she rejects out of hand accurate statements made by Media Matters and several of her readers? None of those explanations would reflect well on her as a journalist, but other explanations do not readily present themselves.

(As for Goldstein himself: I attempted to contact him for an explanation yesterday afternoon. At 9:30 this morning, I attempted to contact the PR firm listed on his press release. As of 4 p.m. today, I have not heard back from either Goldstein or his representatives. If you, too, would like an explanation of how 26 is "absolutely identical" to 39, you can find contact information here and here.)

Fraudulent reporting

If you believe what you see in the news, you'd think that voter fraud is rampant. In fact, it is so rare as to be virtually non-existent. There is ample evidence that far more people are improperly prevented from voting each Election Day than illegally vote. And there's a long history of Republican voter-suppression efforts and of bogus GOP allegations of voter fraud.

You might think, then, that news organizations who have fallen for these phony Republican allegations in the past would react to current Republican allegations of voter fraud by thinking to themselves, "Not this time." That, instead, they'd focus on voter suppression and document the GOP's history of crying "wolf."

But that isn't really the way things work. When John McCain and the GOP say, "Jump," the media ask, "How high?" So the media are flooded with overheated news reports about alleged voter fraud.

Media Matters has extensively documented flawed reporting about voter fraud over the past week:

Ignoring its own reporting, NY Times omitted key facts on ACORN voter registration allegations

CNN reports leave out relevant facts on ACORN voter registration allegations

Media revive pattern of reporting on alleged "voter fraud" concerns, despite lack of evidence

ABC World News reported on ACORN but ignored voter suppression, including indictment of GOP official in NH case

Dick Morris baselessly accused ACORN of "committing voter fraud"

AP, CNN report that Obama represented ACORN, but not that DOJ was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit

WSJ editorial leaves out relevant information in smear of ACORN

Fox News' Kelly mocked ACORN for accurate statement about Florida registration law

The debates: what was missing?

Time's Massimo Calabresi found great significance in the fact that McCain and Obama didn't talk about God during their debates:

In the nearly sixteen thousand words uttered last night in the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, one was noticeably absent: God.

[...]

Still, the fact that both Obama and McCain chose so assiduously not to invoke "God" in any form in any of their debates is noteworthy, not least to people who care about the presence of religion in politics. "Whether intentional or not the discussion of God and the role of faith appears to have been relegated to the Saddleback forum in this general election," says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who calls the development "troubling."

Here's the presidential oath of office, in its entirety:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Nothing about "God" in there. Turns out the president's job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Given the way the current president has approached that job, you might think the Constitution would have been a big topic in the debates.

Well, in the three presidential debates, the only time the word "Constitution" was used was during a discussion of abortion during the final debate. That's a continuation of what happened during the primaries, when the journalists moderating the Democratic and Republican debates all but ignored the Constitution, executive power, and civil liberties.

And yet Time thinks what was missing from the debates was discussion of God.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters: The media's enduring pro-McCain double standard

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:43:36 EST

It isn't surprising that the conventional wisdom is that the news media have turned on Sen. John McCain. After all, decades of attacks from conservatives have conditioned reporters to believe that they are biased against Republicans -- even when there is scant evidence in the reporting to support such claims. And the McCain campaign has launched an all-out assault on the media, complaining relentlessly about the coverage its candidate has gotten.

On top of all that, McCain historically has been the recipient of the most favorable media coverage of any politician in modern American history. Reporters spent years all but offering to peel McCain a grape. So, just as the media judge a candidate to have "won" a debate if s/he "exceeds expectations," the fact that McCain's coverage hasn't been as hagiographic as expected has led many to conclude that it has actually been unfairly negative.

The truth is that when John McCain says "jump," the media still ask, "How high?" Think about this: When was the last time McCain or his campaign has wanted the news media to focus on something, and they have refused? From "lipstick on a pig" to Bill Ayers, the media have scampered after whatever mud McCain has flung, like a puppy dog chasing a stick thrown by its master. Sure, sometimes they have pointed out that McCain is lying -- and that's tremendous progress for a profession that has spent a decade flatly asserting McCain's honesty. But -- as I've explained in the past -- even as they've debunked McCain's claims, they've too often privileged the lie by allowing those claims to drive their coverage.

And, increasingly, they uncritically quote McCain campaign attacks on Sen. Barack Obama for things McCain himself has done. When a campaign does something like this, the media often point out the hypocrisy, and the attack backfires. But those rules don't apply to John McCain. So when John and Cindy McCain attack Barack Obama for what they describe as a vote to "cut off the funds for the troops," the news media dutifully repeat the charge -- without noting that, by the same logic, McCain also voted to cut off funds for the troops: Obama voted against a funding bill that did not include a timeline for withdrawal; McCain voted against a bill that did include a timeline for withdrawal.

The funding vote has been the subject of some of McCain's nastiest attacks recently. Cindy McCain, for example, claimed Obama's "vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body" and lectured: "I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day. ... I suggest he take a day and go watch our fine young men and women deploy." You would think, then, that media reporting Cindy McCain's purported indignation would note that John McCain also voted against funding. They haven't. Indeed, some have falsely stated the opposite -- that McCain did not cast such a vote. You might even think reporters would ask the McCain campaign if Cindy McCain got a "cold chill" when her husband voted "to not fund [her] son." But there is no indication that any reporter has done so.

But the best indication that McCain has not yet truly "lost his 'base,' " as The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder put it this week, is the glaring media double standard in covering the two presidential candidates' controversial relationships.

Let's start with Bill Ayers, since the news media have spent much of the week obliging McCain's efforts to make him the focus of the campaign. As an activist in the 1960s -- when Barack Obama was a young child -- Bill Ayers was a member of the Weathermen, a group of radical activists who launched a series of violent demonstrations and bombings in protest of the Vietnam War. Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a school reform advocate. During Obama's first campaign, Ayers hosted a coffee for him, and the two men have served together on the board of a school reform effort funded by a foundation chaired by Leonore Annenberg, who has endorsed John McCain. The New York Times concluded that Obama and Ayers "do not appear to have been close," and Obama has denounced Ayers' actions as a member of the Weathermen.

A search* of the Nexis database found that more than 4,500 news reports so far this year have mentioned Obama and Ayers -- more than 1,800 this week alone.

Now: G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the break-ins at the Watergate and at Daniel Ellsberg's psychologist's office. He has acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in "if necessary." He plotted to kill journalist Jack Anderson. He plotted with a "gangland figure" to murder Howard Hunt in order to thwart an investigation. He plotted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. He used Nazi terminology to outline a plan to kidnap "leftist guerillas" at the 1972 GOP convention. And Liddy's bad acts were not confined to the early 1970s. In the 1990s, he instructed his radio audience on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents ("Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." In case anyone missed the subtlety of his point, Liddy also insisted: "Kill the sons of bitches.") During Bill Clinton's presidency, Liddy boasted that he named his shooting targets after the Clintons.

What does Liddy have to do with the presidential election? As Media Matters has noted:

Liddy has donated $5,000 to McCain's campaigns since 1998, including $1,000 in February 2008. In addition, McCain has appeared on Liddy's radio show during the presidential campaign, including as recently as May. An online video labeled, "John McCain On The G. Gordon Liddy Show 11/8/07," includes a discussion between Liddy and McCain, whom Liddy described as an "old friend." During the segment, McCain praised Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great," said he was "proud" of Liddy, and said that "it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program."

McCain even backed Liddy's son's congressional bid in 2000 -- a campaign that relied heavily on the elder Liddy's history.

To sum up: John McCain is "proud" of his "old friend" Gordon Liddy -- an old friend who plotted to kill one of the most respected journalists in American history, and who urged listeners to kill federal agents and advised them on how to do so. McCain campaigned for Liddy's son, and Liddy has even hosted a fundraiser for McCain at his home.

So McCain's relationship with Liddy is pretty much a direct parallel to Obama's relationship with Ayers. Except that McCain and Liddy have apparently spent time together more recently than Obama and Ayers. And Liddy's extremist activities continued well into the 1990s, at least. And Liddy says he and McCain are "old friends," while The New York Times says Obama and Ayers aren't close. And Obama has never said Ayers adheres to "the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." Other than all that, it's a direct parallel.

Yet even as they obsess over Barack Obama and Bill Ayers -- just as the McCain campaign tells them to -- the news media have all but ignored John McCain's close ties to Gordon Liddy. A Nexis search** finds fewer than 100 news reports that have mentioned McCain and Liddy this year.

As Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman -- who has criticized Obama's relationship with Ayers -- has noted:

Liddy, now a conservative radio host, has never expressed regret for this attempt to subvert the Constitution. Nor has he developed any respect for the law. ... Yet none of this bothers McCain. Liddy has contributed thousands of dollars to his campaigns, held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and hosted the senator on his radio show, where McCain said, "I'm proud of you." Exactly which part of Liddy's record is McCain proud of?

While Obama has gotten lots of scrutiny for his connection to Ayers, McCain has never had to explain his association with Liddy. If he can't defend it, he should admit as much. And if he thinks he can defend it, let him.

To repeat:

2008 news reports that mention Obama and Ayers: more than 4,500.

2008 news reports that mention McCain and Liddy: fewer than 100.

Incredibly, The Atlantic's Ambinder today suggests that the media have not covered Ayers: "To truly drive Ayers into the public conversation, to trick what they consider an irredeemably biased press corps into biting, McCain has three vehicles gassed up and ready to go. ... So far, McCain has done none of those things." There are 1,800 Nexis hits for Barack Obama and Bill Ayers in the past week, and yet Marc Ambinder thinks the media have not bitten on the Ayers "story" -- and that McCain, who is running ads about Ayers, isn't "really serious" about pushing it, anyway. Even Steve Schmidt would likely be too embarrassed to try to claim that the media have not covered Bill Ayers.

Incidentally, Ambinder doesn't seem to have ever mentioned McCain's relationship to Liddy.

Not only have the media avoided stand-alone reports on McCain and Liddy, they consistently fail to bring up the connection when reporting on McCain's attacks on Obama's ties to Ayers, or in interviews with McCain staff who bring up Ayers. The McCain/Liddy relationship is such an obvious parallel -- except arguably much worse -- that it's hard to imagine how any evenhanded journalist could possibly justify ignoring it. Yet it happens again and again. And, needless to say, McCain aides do not get badgered about Liddy the way Time's Mark Halperin badgered Obama aide Robert Gibbs about Ayers.

Just this morning, NBC's Chuck Todd said he is "sure" Ayers will come up during the final presidential debate next week, adding that moderator Bob Schieffer "may feel no choice but to bring it up" in light of the "TV ads" the McCain campaign and Republican National Committee are running. Setting aside the absurdity of the suggestion that a debate moderator is compelled to bring up a topic simply because John McCain is running ads about it, if Schieffer does ask about Ayers, basic fairness demands that he ask McCain about Liddy as well.

OK ... moving on. How about controversial religious figures? Earlier this year, Media Matters showed that The New York Times and The Washington Post had published a total of 161 articles, editorials, and opinion pieces that mentioned Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright -- and only 12 that mentioned John McCain and John Hagee. That disparity wasn't unique to the Times and the Post -- and it hasn't evened out over time.

161 to 12.

Land deals? Barack Obama once bought a parcel of land from a controversial donor named Tony Rezko. Obama paid more than the land's assessed value -- but that hasn't stopped the news media from suggesting Obama had an improper relationship with Rezko.

Comparatively little attention has been paid to John McCain's relationship with real estate developer Donald Diamond. Diamond, a co-chair of McCain's campaign finance committee, has raised more than $250,000 for McCain's presidential bid and is a "close personal friend" and longtime political patron. For his part, McCain has sponsored two bills sought by Diamond that helped the developer gain what The New York Times described as "millions of dollars and thousands of acres" of land. And McCain helped Diamond buy another parcel of land from the U.S. Army -- a deal that helped Diamond turn a $20 million profit. The Washington Post and USA Today have identified other land deals McCain has facilitated as senator that have benefited some of his biggest donors and fundraisers.

Yet a Media Matters review last month found that five national newspapers had run a total of 39 articles, editorials, and opinion pieces that mentioned Obama and Rezko -- but only seven that mentioned McCain and his donors' land deals:

[S]ince The New York Times' initial April 22 article [about McCain and Diamond], the land deals have been mentioned in only six additional news articles, editorials, or opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, or The Washington Post, and have yet to be mentioned on any evening network news program. By contrast, during the same time period, 39 news articles, editorials, or opinion pieces in those papers have collectively mentioned Obama and Rezko; and the evening news broadcasts have collectively mentioned Obama and Rezko in five reports.

39 to 7.

And, of course, there's always Charles Keating. The news media have done their best to ignore McCain's involvement in the Keating Five -- and, when they have mentioned it, they've done so by parroting the McCain-friendly storyline that the scandal turned the Arizona senator into the World's Greatest Reformer. Even this week, after the Obama campaign drew attention to McCain's involvement in the Keating Five with a Web page and a 13-minute documentary featuring one of the regulators McCain pressured on behalf of his political benefactor, the media have paid far more attention to Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers than to McCain's relationship with Keating. And when they have mentioned Keating, they have often questioned the propriety of the Obama campaign's decision to bring up the subject.

Remember: Barack Obama didn't have anything to do with Bill Ayers' wrongdoing. He was a young child at the time. McCain did have something to do with Keating's wrongdoing -- without McCain, the scandal would have been called the Keating Four, not the Keating Five.

And yet the media are quick to dismiss the Keating matter. When the topic came up on MSNBC earlier this week, Andrea Mitchell dismissed it as having occurred 20 years ago. Well, sure. But McCain was involved in it 20 years ago, unlike Bill Ayers' controversial activities, which occurred closer to 40 years ago, and which Barack Obama didn't have anything to do with.

The American people have made clear that they think the most important consideration in deciding who to vote for is the economy. An astounding 52 percent of Americans call "the economy and jobs" the "most important" issue to them in this election, according to the latest CBS/New York Times poll. Terrorism and national security came in a distant second, with only 11 percent.

John McCain and his campaign have made clear that they do not want the last few weeks of this campaign to be about the economy, the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, health care, the housing crisis, or the Constitution. They want it to be about personal associations.

Incredibly, much of the news media have sided with John McCain in treating Bill Ayers and ACORN as the most important topic facing the nation. Even worse, they are scrutinizing only Obama's relationships, not McCain's. It's bad enough that they're letting McCain, rather than the American people, set the parameters of the debate. The fact that they aren't applying those parameters to both candidates equally is an inexcusable double-standard.

And it's evidence that John McCain retains the support of his "base" -- the media.

* Conducted 10/9/08 using the search terms Barack Obama and ((Bill or William) w/2 Ayers

** Conducted 10/9/08 using the search terms John McCain and Gordon Liddy

Media Matters: Time for clarity

Fri, 3 Oct 2008 16:57:05 EST

With little more than a month to go before Election Day, voters need the news media to cut through the clutter of the candidates' competing sound bites and spin. They need clear and concise explanations of what, exactly, the candidates would do if elected. And they need the media to provide this every day, not just once in a while.

Unfortunately, they aren't getting it. Instead, they are faced with countless news reports that simply repeat charges and counter-charges or obsess over minor details while failing to provide the big picture - news reports that obscure rather than clarify the candidates' proposals and positions.

Take, for example, tax cuts.

Three weeks ago, The Washington Post ran an article headlined "Mixed Impressions on Taxes; Gaps Exist Between Candidates' Positions, Public Perceptions" -- an article that offered a perfect example of why voters don't correctly understand the candidates' positions. As I noted at the time in a post on Media Matters' blog:

The Post tells us the "average tax cut" for "middle-income families" under McCain's plan: $321, according to the Tax Policy Center. Is that more or less than such families would get under Obama's plan? That's a fairly basic question, and one you would think an article about the candidates' tax plans would answer. But the Post says only that under Obama's plan, "lower- and middle-income workers would see large tax cuts." Well, great. How large? More than under McCain's plan? Less? The Post doesn't tell readers. Is it any wonder that voters don't understand the candidates' tax plans?

Nor did the Post article give any indication of the total costs of the two candidates' tax plans. In an article about the fact that the public lacks clear understanding of the candidates' positions, the Post failed to spell out clearly and simply the most basic facts about their tax plans.

It shouldn't be at all difficult to answer some basic facts: How much does each candidate's plan cost? How does each candidate's plan distribute tax cuts (and increases)? How much would the average taxpayer at various income levels save under each plan? Which plan would give a larger tax cut to middle class taxpayers? At what income level, if any, does that change? How much would the candidates save under their own plans -- and each other's?

But the Post article didn't even attempt to answer those questions -- none of them.

Well, that's not quite true: the Post revealed that under Obama's plan, "families in the top 1 percent of the income scale would see an average annual tax increase of nearly $100,000" and under McCain's plan they "would see an average tax cut of nearly $49,000." So, readers whose income places them in the top 1 percent got some sense of how they would be affected by the two plans. But the Post didn't indicate what the income threshold is for the "top 1 percent," so many readers presumably thought (incorrectly) that those figures applied to them -- or incorrectly thought they didn't. Most people presumably do not know in what percentile their income places them -- but they do know what their income is. So the one direct comparison the Post made was rendered nearly useless by poor wording.

But that's just one article. Sure, it's more than a little absurd that the Post failed to make clear the most basic facts about the candidates' tax plans in an article about the public's lack of understanding of those plans. Maybe the Post has done a better job since then?

No. Not at all.

In the three weeks since that article, The Washington Post has not run a single news article that directly compared the total costs of the candidates' tax plans. Not a single article that directly compared the distribution of the tax cuts. How much would the average middle class family save under Obama's plan, and under McCain's? The Washington Post won't say. How much would the typical millionaire save under each plan? The Washington Post won't say. How much would John McCain and Barack Obama save under each plan? The Washington Post doesn't tell you.

It isn't like the Post is just ignoring tax cuts as a campaign issue: the paper regularly quotes or paraphrases the candidates' claims and counterclaims. It just doesn't tell you what's true; it doesn't give voters the most basic information they need to assess how they would fare under the plans.

Well, that isn't totally fair. On September 23, the Post ran an article accompanied by a chart showing "change in yearly taxes" under both candidates for several income ranges. Here's how the article began: "The U.S. economy is complicated. It even stumps many adults!"

Wait. What?

You guessed it: that was a KidsPost article, on page C-12. It seems the Post's children's section has done a better job of clearly reporting essential information about the candidates' tax plans than has the rest of the paper. Sadly, not even KidsPost indicates the total costs of the respective proposals; the words "deficit" and "budget" do not appear in the article.

There's no reason to single out The Washington Post, though. The New York Times has done a better job of comparing the candidates' tax plans, but has still fallen far short of clearly and consistently laying out the basics. Over the past three weeks, five Times articles have, with varying degrees of specificity, indicated that middle-class taxpayers would receive a larger cut under Obama's plan. But none has spelled out how the wealthy would fare under each plan, or indicated the total costs of the plans. And it probably goes without saying that the Times hasn't told readers how the candidates themselves would do under their plans.

And tax cuts are only one example. News reports about the candidates' health care plans, their views on executive power and global warming and energy and a whole host of other issues suffer from the same lack of clarity.

It would be easy for the news media to spend the next month recounting the latest campaign sniping and petty distractions; easy for them to fall back on he-said, she-said reporting; easy to obsess over the minutiae of policy proposals. But that isn't what voters need. They need clear and concise explanations of what the candidates have done, and of what they plan to do. And they need it every day, not just every once in a while, in between dozens of news reports that confuse more than they clarify.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

Media Matters: Ignoring Keating

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:43:16 EST

Every few days, John McCain or his campaign lashes out at the news media, often focusing their ire on The New York Times, for alleged bias against the Republican presidential candidate. It's a strange claim coming from the politician who has enjoyed a cozier relationship with the national media than any other in memory.

Patrick Healy's article in this morning's New York Times provides yet another of the countless examples that undermine McCain's claim. Though most public polling -- including the Times' own poll -- shows that more people have confidence in Barack Obama's ability to handle the economy than in McCain's, and more people think Obama understands their needs and problems, Healy asserted that Obama is "out of sync" with the public and accused him of "convey[ing] a certain distance from the ache that many voters feel."

On Monday, the McCain campaign accused The New York Times of being "150 percent in the tank" for Obama. On Friday, the Times demonstrated the absurdity of that accusation by publishing an article that baselessly asserted that Obama is struggling to connect with the public on economic issues despite the fact that polling shows the exact opposite -- it is McCain who is struggling. But that wasn't the only bizarre element of the Times article: Seemingly out of the blue, Healy invoked Obama's race:

He wants to appear fired up over the economy, but he has written before about wanting to avoid appearing like a stereotypical angry black man. Unlike Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black leaders whose fulminations could scare white voters, Mr. Obama is not from and of New York, Detroit, or the segregated South; he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. To some degree Mr. Obama faces the opposite challenge from fiery black leaders who came before him: Is he too cool for a crisis like this one?

So, according to Times reporter Patrick Healy, Jesse Jackson is too hot, and Barack Obama is too cool. Presumably, Healy will let us know when he finds an African-American who is just right.

And this, remember, is the newspaper that the McCain campaign says is "150 percent in the tank" for Obama.

But the week's most striking indication that the media are inadequately scrutinizing McCain rather than, as he claims, unfairly doing so is that in the midst of a banking crisis, there is virtually no media examination of McCain's role in a similar crisis 20 years ago.

Sure, the Keating Five has been mentioned in news reports during this campaign. But when McCain's involvement in the scandal comes up in the media, it tends to be a brief mention -- and often one that paints McCain in the best possible light. On Monday, Politico reporter Ben Smith gave a telling response to the Obama campaign's complaints that insufficient attention has been paid to McCain's relationship with Keating:

The Keating Five scandal, though, is hardly a secret. Indeed, the story is central to McCain's political narrative. He's called his actions a mistake, and the episode is what transformed him into a self-stylled [sic] reformer.

"He has basically dedicated his career since that moment to the cleaning up of Washington," McCain aide Douglas Holtz-Eakin told me last week.

As Smith's reaction demonstrates, the version of the Keating Five story the media typically tell is the version that is "central to McCain's political narrative" -- that the experience turned McCain into a political Mr. Clean, rampaging against corruption in the nation's capital. We are told McCain's tale of redemption -- but little of what he did to make redemption necessary.

Take, for example, one of the most damning -- and under-reported -- facts of the case: Not only did McCain take campaign contributions and free Bahamas vacations from Keating, but his wife also invested more than $350,000 in a Keating real estate development shortly before McCain met with federal banking regulators on Keating's behalf.

Yes, John McCain's wife -- in whose houses McCain lives and entertains throngs of adoring reporters -- had a direct financial relationship with Keating. And according to The Boston Globe, one of the regulators who felt like he was pressured by McCain to go easy on Keating believes McCain intervened in part because of Cindy McCain's investment with Keating.

A New York Times editorial earlier this year touched on the investment in arguing for the release of Cindy McCain's taxes:

There is no question that Mr. McCain -- the candidate -- has reaped considerable benefits from his wife's wealth, including discounted use of her company's corporate jet to fly from state to state during this campaign.

Voters also deserve to know whether any of Senator McCain's official actions have benefited his wife, family members, or their business associates, as they did in the case of Charles Keating, the Arizona developer and savings and loan operator at the center of the Keating Five scandal two decades ago. A year before Mr. McCain's 1987 meetings with bank regulators on Mr. Keating's behalf, Mrs. McCain and her father invested more than $350,000 in a strip mall developed by Mr. Keating.

[...]

Senator and Mrs. McCain should show that they're both committed to open government and release Mrs. McCain's returns.

But Cindy McCain's tax returns still have not been released. And the news media (which obsessively demanded the release of Bill and Hillary Clinton's tax returns) have all but ignored the topic. And the fact that Cindy McCain was a business partner of Keating's has been treated as a state secret by the national news media. Since January 1, 2007:

The New York Times has not mentioned the investment in a single news article, even though the paper's editorial board has explained its significance.

The Washington Post has not mentioned the investment -- not once. The Post has run two separate profiles of Cindy McCain that mentioned the Keating Five controversy, each of which ran more than 2,500 words. But, incredibly, neither article mentioned the strip mall investment. Nor has any other Washington Post article during the campaign.

Neither USA Today nor Time magazine has mentioned the investment.

Neither ABC, nor CBS, nor NBC has mentioned the investment -- not a single time.

CNN has mentioned the investment in profiles of McCain that have aired several times. In one, the cable channel even aired video of one of the Keating regulators who felt pressured noting that "Senator McCain was unique among the five senators in having a direct financial conflict of interest involving direct investments. ... On judgment, ethics and truthfulness, he failed this test as badly as you can fail." But CNN has been an exception among national media, not the rule.

In 1990, in the midst of the Keating Five investigation, the Phoenix New Times noted that the scandal had scuttled McCain's hopes at national office:

The stakes are incredibly high for McCain. There was a time, before the Keating bubble burst, when he was reportedly being considered for a spot on the Republican ticket as vice president.

Those days are over.

Now, with the nation in the midst of another banking crisis caused in part by deregulation, John McCain is running for president -- and the national media are keeping the details of his involvement in the Keating fiasco a secret.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:09:07 EST

The media's counterproductive focus on negative campaigning

It's getting awfully hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing a news report about the presidential campaign turning negative. It often seems the media consider the tone of the campaign more important than the collapsing economy, the war, our continued failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and the Bush administration's apparent disdain for the Constitution -- combined.

Before we go any further, let me be clear: I'm not saying that negative campaigning isn't as bad as the media makes it out to be.

I'm saying negative campaigning is essential to American democracy.

See, for voters to make good decisions, they have to have good information. And, unfortunately, candidates aren't in the habit of telling voters things they've done (or plan to do) that are unpopular, or of running ads about the flaws in their own proposals. And since voters need to know the candidates' weaknesses as well as their strengths, and the disadvantages to their proposals, they need somebody to talk about those things.

Oh, sure, we could rely on the media to do that. How have they been doing lately? Anybody think they did a good job of assessing the candidates' relative weaknesses in 2000? Of poking holes in the Bush administration's tragically flawed arguments for the Iraq war? Of putting down the doughnuts and barbecued ribs long enough to pin John McCain down on how long he's willing to keep fighting in Iraq, what, exactly, he plans on doing to Social Security, how he would pay for his tax cuts and wars, or how much you have to make in order for him to consider you "rich"?

Anyone who thinks we can rely on the media to tell us what the candidates don't want us to know should head over to the Swampland blog, where Time reporter Michael Scherer insists that it is unfair to bring up John McCain's lengthy history of voting and speaking in favor of Social Security privatization. Scherer says we should instead simply look at the position statements on McCain's campaign Web page (statements that actually don't provide any reason to think that McCain no longer supports privatization, though Scherer seems to think they do. See my posts on Media Matters' new blog, County Fair, for further explanation.)

So, we need candidates to engage in negative campaigning -- that is, in criticizing their opponents' positions, experience, and previous performance. That's far different from dishonest campaigning. Or from tactics that cross the line from "negative" to downright sleazy. Those tactics should be called out by the news media, and frequently. But the media's reflexive focus on simply "negative" campaigning is unnecessary and often counterproductive.

It is unnecessary because the question of whether a candidate or campaign is "too negative" is a visceral question, not a logical one. Voters don't need reporters to try to measure negativity for them or to keep reminding them of it. If something is too negative for them, voters will have a visceral reaction against it; if not, they won't. Either way, they are perfectly capable of coming to that conclusion on their own. (With the important exception that if a campaign is running a viciously negative below-the-radar campaign, such as a whispering campaign like the one George W. Bush waged against John McCain in 2000, voters can benefit from the media shining a light on those tactics.)

What voters can't easily do on their own is assess whether ads are true, false, or somewhere in between. That's where the media can be useful. They have the resources -- and, ideally, some expertise -- to assess the validity of claims made in campaign ads. That's how reporters can actually be useful -- by doing what the voters can't do for themselves, and doing it well.

Unfortunately, the news media often lump true criticism together with dishonest or sleazy criticism, as though all negative campaigning is equal, and equally bad. This week, a study concluded that a larger percentage of Barack Obama's ads since the political conventions have been "negative," bringing another round of news reports that drew false equivalence between very different tactics.

The Wisconsin Advertising Project looked at a single week's worth of ads in determining that 56 percent of McCain ads and 77 percent of Obama ads were "negative." Aside from the dangers in drawing conclusions from such a small sample of campaign ads, the findings are of limited value given that the project made no effort to assess the veracity or fairness of the ads in question. In fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the study counted any ad that so much as mentioned the opponent's name as "negative."

I suppose it might be mildly interesting to know that 56 percent of John McCain's ads mention Barack Obama, or that 77 percent of Obama's ads mention McCain. But it doesn't really tell us anything useful. How did they mention each other? Did the ads criticize policy positions or personality? Were they honest? The answers to those questions are essential to any meaningful assessment of the candidates' campaign tactics. (If you do find the project's findings compelling, you should keep in mind that in July, based on a much larger sample, the project found that more of McCain's ads were negative.)

Despite the study's failure to even attempt to assess the validity of the ads it declared "negative," several news organizations hyped the findings. Worse, some suggested the finding that more of Obama's ads have been negative undermines the recent conclusions of many impartial observers that the McCain campaign ads have been more dishonest than those of the Obama campaign.

The New York Post, for example, reported that the results of the study "clash with recent media coverage accusing McCain of distorting Obama's record in ads." Nonsense. That's like saying that the fact that this is September clashes with the fact that it is Friday.

On Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews also touted the study:

The McCain camp's been getting a lot of attention for some recent hard-hitting ads. In fact, the Wisconsin Advertising Project, a group that studies politics ads nationwide, deems that 56 percent of the ads aired by the McCain campaign last week were negative. That's 56 percent of McCain's ads, negative.

But here's a number that may surprise you. How many of Obama's ads in that same time period last week were negative? Seventy-seven percent -- an indication, perhaps, that Obama intends to come out swinging -- or these are the next couple months. He's going to be doing it. Nearly four out of five ads Obama aired last week were negative -- tonight's "Big Number."

But the more significant "attention" McCain has been getting has not been for negative ads -- it has been for false ads. Matthews disappears that criticism, suggesting that the criticism of McCain has been for negativity rather than dishonesty.

On Race to the White House, Matthews' colleague David Gregory said, "Obama says he wants a new kind of politics. Why is he running more negative ads than Senator McCain?" Later, Gregory played an Obama ad accusing McCain of dishonest attack ads -- but look at how Gregory characterized the Obama ad:

GREGORY: That is a new campaign ad from the Obama campaign. It is out this week, taking a swipe at John McCain for his negative ads. Take a look at this, a new study from the Wisconsin Advertising Project says that it is Obama slinging the most mud on TV; 77 percent of Obama's ads after the GOP convention were negative, compared to 56 percent of McCain's.

No. Obama's ad took a "swipe" at McCain for dishonest ads, not merely for negative ads. By changing Obama's criticism, Gregory was able to use the Wisconsin study to paint him as a hypocrite. And note the phrasing Gregory used to describe the study's findings -- the loaded phrase "it is Obama slinging the most mud on TV." Remember, the study made no effort whatsoever to assess the content of the ads; it simply counted as negative any mention of the opponent's name. On that flimsy basis, Gregory accuses Obama of "slinging the most mud" -- even as the consensus among neutral observers has been that McCain is leveling more false attacks.

Lumping all negative statements together as "slinging mud," without differentiating between true claims and false (or fair and unfair) doesn't inform viewers; it is a false equivalence that serves only to advantage truly dishonorable attacks by making them appear no worse than run-of-the-mill factual criticism. It plays into the hands of liars and smear merchants. And it penalizes honest and fair criticisms -- though such criticisms are essential to the voters' ability to make informed decisions.