Yes, they can. And they did. We Republicans lost big in this presidential election, and now we should respectfully hand over the bragging rights to Democrats, with hopes of snagging them back again in four years. Despite the significant loss McCain and the Republican Party experienced Tuesday, we can argue that under the circumstances it could've been a lot worse. And for that reason, we can't be completely devastated.
From the beginning of this race, the media favored Democratic candidates. Actually, from what seems as the beginning of time, the media has favored Democratic candidates. During the primary season, there were 500 more stories printed in the mainstream press about the three leading Democratic candidates than there were for their Republican counterparts.
As the race wore on, it's hard to prove that the media's treatment of John McCain and Barack Obama was close to equivalent. The same idea applied to their vice presidential picks. Stories about Obama and Joe Biden were not only more positive than those on McCain and Sarah Palin, they were also greater in number, giving them more free press.
Studies have already found that when the general campaign season began after the conventions, negative stories about McCain were three times more frequent than those about Obama. The Project for Excellence in Journalism studied 48 news outlets and found that 57 percent of broadcast and print stories about McCain were negative and 14 percent were positive.
On the other hand, only 29 percent of stories about Obama were negative.
Those figures probably don't shock anyone because bias in the media is nothing new. What was new was the enormous amount of money the Democratic Party candidate amassed and spent throughout the campaign. Obama abandoned his promise to take public funds and raised $641 million, almost twice as much as McCain and almost as much as George W. Bush and John Kerry combined in 2004.
This money, and the fact that he shared none of it with his fellow Democratic senators running for office, gave him an edge in swing states. These funds allowed him to hire large numbers of people, travel more and advertise as if the money had no end. He was also able to seal blue states quickly and challenge McCain in traditionally red states.
It's also worth noting that the traditional ebb and flow of presidential picks was not on McCain's side. More often than not, after eight years of the same president, America chooses a successor from the opposite political party.
Leave a comment 8 Comments Write a letter to the editor
All letters to the editor must include a name, e-mail, daytime phone number and affiliation to Virginia Tech. Affiliation includes: year and major for students; position and department for faculty and staff; current city for alumni and parents.
Why should the press have to offer the same number of negative stories about each candidate? Their job is to report the news, not create a false storyline because of some misguided attempt at fairness.
Reply to this Top
Certainly the media doesn't have to be fair. However, it is shocking sometimes how far the media bias can extend. There has always been bias in the news, it just seemed that this election season really let it show. She is just pointing out the extremes we saw in this election. I am glad McCain did not win but still not enthused about Obama in office. And towards the author: why flock towards partisanship? I guess I just don't get it.
Reply to this Top
Please...you might as well question why the Republican Party treated President Bush like a leper this year (disinvited to the convention). Its because "it didn't sell" covering McCain as much as covering Obama and Hilary. You notice the exception to the rule was Sarah Palin. Heck, the "liberal media" is currently wistfully hoping she runs in 2012...so they can dump on her which will bring in more viewers. Ratings..and if they were so liberal they would cover black girls that go missing...
Reply to this Top
McCain failed to own the news cycles and it buried him -- blaming it on the liberal media more than a self-delusional. McCain ran a sloppy campaign with mixed messages at the start, at the end he failed to speak to the middle class about how they would be protected by the failings of the upper-class/corporations. Obama listened to what people wanted to hear about talked to them about that. He didn't hang the entirety of his campaign on negative campaigning that McCain did.
Reply to this Top
The media needs to offer the same number of negative stories in an election like this because they are the gatekeeper. There were tons of stories about Obama that were not covered enough and both sides know that. Dont make me get out the list. They set the agenda for us to think about, not the other way around. The media is a reflection that has started to move for us. Shame shame on them.
Reply to this Top
Anonymous on Nov. 6, Bush and Cheney were both invited to the convention. They did not attend because of a major hurricane happening in the Gulf of Mexico. PS- EXCELLENT story, Liza.
Reply to this Top
...and the Republicans didn't treat him like a leper. W set a record today which should make you proud....24% popularity!
Reply to this Top
Most of images you see on the Web are actually fakes and you can't really trust them. To get rid of such confusion, a handy and useful tool called <a href="http://www.pskiller.com/">Photoshopped Image Killer</a> will tell you whether an image has been edited by some software, or it's real. As indicated by it's name, the tool has best performance for Photoshop. However other image editors are covered as well.
Reply to this Top