Rangerland Forum Information

[xcheck24]

http://www.journalism.org/node/12200

For the first time since this general election campaign began in early June, Republican John McCain attracted virtually as much media attention as his Democratic rival last week.

Barack Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 81% of the campaign stories compared with 78% for McCain, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for July 28-Aug. 3. Not only was that a high water mark for McCain in the general election season (his previous best was 62% from June 30-July 6). The virtual dead heat in the race for exposure between the two candidates also marked the first time his weekly coverage had even been within 10 percentage points of Obama’s total. Indeed, in the eight weeks since early June when the general election contest began, 79% of the stories have significantly featured Obama, compared with 55% for his Republican rival.

This post has been edited by xcheck24: Aug 5 2008, 12:48 PM

[Hockeybird]

It's not just the amount of coverage, but the type. I think it's fair to suggest that Obama gets much more positive coverage.

However, this race is strange in that this is no longer about 8 years of bush.....it's about whether one can trust Obama. That's the ONLY shot McCain has. I wish then both luck.....I may just drop out of this all together as i don't feel like it'll make much difference either way for me short term.

[xcheck24]

Actually, Bird, there was a study showing that journalists -- specifically the networks -- are harder on Obama than they are on McCain. I posted this link in another thread yesterday:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=147632

I think it was true that the coverage was more favorable in the primary coverage for Obama, but not so in the general election coverage.

[Sed]

Newshole

Jen - when you went through journalism boot camp, did your DI ever yell at you to shut your newshole?

[xcheck24]

HA!!
(I'm gonna have to use that one)

[Nilan 666]

McCain gets very favorable coverage via omission. The whole Czechoslovakia thing etc.

[Zaylenz]

This might be interesting. The Washington Post did a word cloud on the words most used on each campaign's blog. Here are the results. (Note that the bigger the word in the cloud, the more often it's used.)



The one on the left is from Obama's campaign blog. The one on the right is McCain's.

Kind of interesting to note that the words Obama and Obama's, which are counted as two seperate words, are much much more prominent on McCain's blog than his own name, which is in purple in the upper right corner of the cloud. Obama's word cloud doesn't have McCain listed at all. So even McCain's own campaign website gives more coverage to Obama than McCain.

This post has been edited by Zaylenz: Aug 5 2008, 06:43 PM