-By Warner Todd Huston
As if we didn’t know already by the evidence of the left-wing media establishment’s work, Pew Research unveiled a new survey that showed that John McCain has been on the receiving end of “heavily unfavorable” coverage. In fact, according to Pew, McCain’s media coverage has become more negative over time with unfavorable stories about him outweighing favorable ones “by a factor of more than three-to-one.” Pew finds that McCain’s negative stories are the highest from among all four major candidates.
First of all, we should remember that the Pew survey was drawn from news coverage — opinion pieces were not included. So, if we were to add all the opinion editorials emanating from the Old Media, the unfavorables for McCain and Palin would soar to unprecedented heights. But, Op-Eds aside and with the fact that we are talking “news,” it is still amazing to note the highly negative tone leveled at McCain.
Pew found that, for McCain “nearly six-in-ten stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57%), while fewer than two-in-ten (14%) were positive.”
On the other hand, for Obama “just over a third of the stories were clearly positive in tone (36%), while a similar number (35%) were neutral or mixed. A smaller number (29%) were negative.”
As McClatchy reported the survey, they added a caveat from the authors:
Finally, a caveat from the authors: Obama, and then McCain, received negative coverage as each began to drop in the polls. “Winning in politics begat winning coverage,” the study said. Which means: When someone is leading, we do positive stories about them leading – and how smart they were to get there.
But, here is the thing and it is an addendum of sorts to the negatives thrown at McCain: who is it that says that McCain is dropping in the polls? The same polling organizations that have been wrong so very often. Add to that the sort of polls that AOL or The New York Times pay for that are clearly biased with heavier Democrat samples and we end up with polls that are often purposefully skewed to favor the Democrats. And then, after the media gets their skewed polls, they then use that false authority to claim that McCain deserves the negative stories because Obama appears to be “winning in politics” to “begat winning coverage.”
So, the Old Media wants Obama to be the “smart” one that “got there” and they want McCain and Palin to be the stumbling, dummies that failed. They get their specially tailored polls to prove it. They then write their stories of the “winning” Obama accordingly. “That one” is “The One.”
A self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the media, for sure.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston