Poll: Media Trying To Help Obama Win
From Politico ~ Half of Americans think the press is trying to help Sen. Barack Obama win the presidential election, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports.
In an automated survey of 1000 likely voters, Rasmussen found that 49 percent of respondents believed reporters would favor Obama in their coverage this fall, compared with just 14 percent who expected them to boost Sen. John McCain.
The number of Americans who see pro-Obama bias in the press has increased by five percent in the last month.
According to Rasmussen’s numbers, less than a quarter of voters – 24 percent – now trust the press to report on the election without bias.
“People are looking at reporters the way reporters want us to look at Wikipedia,” said Rasmussen Reports CEO Scott Rasmussen. “It’s useful information, but you’ve got to check the source.”
Rasmussen suggested that glowing coverage of the run-up to Obama’s trip abroad may have contributed to the perception that reporters sympathize with his campaign.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, suggested a different source for the public’s concerns about bias: the press itself. “As the press covers reports of disparities in amount[s] of coverage,” Jamieson said, “the belief, often reinforced in conservative media, that the press are biased against the Republican should increase.”
Jamieson pointed to a study released last week by the Tyndall Report, a media-monitoring group, that showed Obama vastly outstripping McCain in press coverage, as the kind of report that would “magnify this perception of bias among non-Obama supporters. I am sure that the press will dismiss or even better ignore the poll results, but it does serve as a glimpse of the challenge McCain faces during the campaign. A media darling when he was railing against GOP policies has been usurped by a charismatic, slickly packaged Democrat that more closely resembles the media's own personal viewpoints."
In an automated survey of 1000 likely voters, Rasmussen found that 49 percent of respondents believed reporters would favor Obama in their coverage this fall, compared with just 14 percent who expected them to boost Sen. John McCain.
The number of Americans who see pro-Obama bias in the press has increased by five percent in the last month.
According to Rasmussen’s numbers, less than a quarter of voters – 24 percent – now trust the press to report on the election without bias.
“People are looking at reporters the way reporters want us to look at Wikipedia,” said Rasmussen Reports CEO Scott Rasmussen. “It’s useful information, but you’ve got to check the source.”
Rasmussen suggested that glowing coverage of the run-up to Obama’s trip abroad may have contributed to the perception that reporters sympathize with his campaign.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, suggested a different source for the public’s concerns about bias: the press itself. “As the press covers reports of disparities in amount[s] of coverage,” Jamieson said, “the belief, often reinforced in conservative media, that the press are biased against the Republican should increase.”
Jamieson pointed to a study released last week by the Tyndall Report, a media-monitoring group, that showed Obama vastly outstripping McCain in press coverage, as the kind of report that would “magnify this perception of bias among non-Obama supporters. I am sure that the press will dismiss or even better ignore the poll results, but it does serve as a glimpse of the challenge McCain faces during the campaign. A media darling when he was railing against GOP policies has been usurped by a charismatic, slickly packaged Democrat that more closely resembles the media's own personal viewpoints."
Labels: 2008 Presidential Race, Media Bias, Politico
posted by Mike McCarville @ 10:23 AM
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