The MSM Bias

Noooo, the MSM isn’t biased at all:

President Bush just can’t win with the broadcast networks.

More than two-thirds of the news stories on ABC, NBC and CBS covering the first 100 days of Mr. Bush’s second term were negative, according to an analysis released today by the District-based Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA).

It’s actually a slight improvement: During the first 100 days of his initial term in office, the coverage was 71 percent negative, according to a similar CMPA study conducted in 2001.
In comparison, President Clinton’s first-term news coverage was 59 percent negative in 1993.

The three networks also seem to be boycotting Mr. Bush this time around. He rated 619 stories during the study period in 2001– but just 250 stories this year, the study found.

“Presidents tend to get bad coverage during their second terms. The press is sick of them by then. The Iraq war and the weapons-of-mass-destruction question was a particular factor for Mr. Bush this time,” said CMPA director Robert Lichter.

“Many journalists felt tricked by the White House, and consequently were not going to let the president get away with anything,” Mr. Lichter said.

“But the public isn’t going to let the news media get away with anything either,” he added. “The public is more critical and ask more questions about news coverage these days — and what offends them most is negativism.”

The CMPA study analyzed stories that aired Jan. 20 to April 29.

ABC was the most critical — 78 percent of the coverage of the president on “ABC World News Tonight” was negative. On CBS, the coverage was 71 percent negative. The study called NBC “more balanced” at 57 percent negative.

The analysis also flagged comments deemed judgmental or overtly negative.

“Without comment about how he felt taking the nation to war on such flawed assumptions, President Bush agreed it’s time to go to work,” said CBS correspondent John Roberts on March 31.

NBC, meanwhile, showcased one Georgia voter saying in early February, “I’m in the working world, trying to make a living. Seems like [Bush is] screwing it all up.”

The three networks also had pet targets. Seventy-eight percent of stories about Mr. Bush’s Social Security reforms were negative, along with 77 percent of stories on his domestic policy and 71 percent of stories on Iraq policy.

The president got an easier ride on his foreign policies. The study found that those stories were 58 percent negative.

But Bush-bashing seems to be entrenched. The press “battered” the president during the 2004 election season, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism analysis of 817 print and broadcast stories that ran in October.

Mr. Bush “suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry,” the study stated. “Overall, 59 percent of Bush-dominated stories were clearly negative in nature,” while “just 25 percent of Kerry stories were decidedly negative.”

I’m sure this surprised alot of you. Sigh….

On a related note, the Asshat Propaganda made a correction today on one of its articles:

Two days after the terrorist bombings in London, British Prime Minister Blair gave a high-profile interview on BBC Radio, which Associated Press covered in this manner:

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain must defend against terrorism – but must also strive to understand the underlying causes of the violence, which he identified as deprivation, lack of democracy and ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

“I think this type of terrorism has very deep roots,” Blair said. “As well as dealing with the consequences of this – trying to protect ourselves as much as any civil society can – you have to try to pull it up by its roots.”

That meant boosting understanding between people of different religions, helping people in the Middle East see a path to democracy and easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, he said. (emphasis added)

Blair’s apparent linking of Israel with the London attacks set off a firestorm, angering Israeli leaders while pleasing Palestinians. An editorial from Israel’s largest paper, Yediot Ahronot, responded ‘With all due respect, the British Prime Minister is wrong,’ while Palestinian spokesman Saeb Arekat quipped that Blair had ‘touched reality and spoke strategically of the need to deal with the problems of this region.’

But HonestReporting subscribers in England who had listened carefully to Blair’s BBC interview noticed something strange ? in the interview (available here), Blair never actually mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What did Blair say? That ‘some of the critical issues in the Middle East’ need to be ‘dealt with and sorted out’. AP editorialized Blair’s vague statement to mean the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After receiving complaints from the HR subscribers, Associated Press issued an official correction:

In a July 9 story about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

Yup, that’s right. The editors at the AP didn’t just misquote Blair, they made up whole parts of his answers. But hey, no bias there.

Previous:

Calling The MSM Out!
The Bias In The Media
MSM At It Again – Part V
MSM At It Again – Part IV
Traitors In The MSM
The Bias In The MSM
MSM At It Again – Part III
MSM At It Again – Part II
The MSM At It Again
The MSM Traitors
The Media & The War