If you're Kerry, you gotta love the coverage
Tim Goodman
Wednesday, October 27, 2004Tim Goodman from today's SF Chronicle
People with working brains long ago gave up on polls, unreflective punditry and those headline-grabbing "new studies" that pop up every other weekend. There's always a flaw in the mechanism, a disregard for contemplation or something suspect in the methodology.
And yet they persist. And yet again -- follow the narrative flow here - - sometimes a trustworthy organization comes up with real thoughts and dangles them before us like bright lights and eye candy. Result: mesmerization.
The latest such study, "The Debate Effect: How the Press Covered the Pivotal Period of the 2004 Presidential Election," was released today and comes from the respected Project for Excellence in Journalism and so, despite the annoying alliteration, it deserves attention.
Partly because you may have heard about this pretty big election in six days and the report damns the press for its coverage in a crucial decision- making stage.
Well, crucial if you believe that there are people in this country who haven't made up their minds yet about whom they want for president and thus are damaged by alleged media bias. But that's just quibbling.
"In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry," according to the study.
And all across a partisan country, millions of people collectively say, "Told you so."Partly because you may have heard about this pretty big election in six days and the report damns the press for its coverage in a crucial decision- making stage.
Well, crucial if you believe that there are people in this country who haven't made up their minds yet about whom they want for president and thus are damaged by alleged media bias. But that's just quibbling.
"In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry," according to the study.
And all across a partisan country, millions of people collectively say, "Told you so."
full article: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/27/DDGV89FTJ91.DTL
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