[lit-ideas] Re: Study: Media coverage has favored Obama campaign
- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 14:05:05 -0500
>>What, pray tell, would "fair and balanced" coverage look like if it were
not hopelessly skewed to deny what is sitting there in plain view?
Good thing I still get magazines. That issue is being addressed by
academics, some of whom are well aware of the bias toward Obama.
In her article "Going Beyond Fair and Balanced," -- Scientific American,
November 2008, pp. 24-28 -- Vivian Martin gives an overview of attempts to
put more rigor into media bias research. She presents the current state of
the issues in Media Bias Theory, discussing the work of Tim Groenig, a UCLA
sociology professor, Maxwell McCombs, the Univeristy of Texas scholar who
pioneered "agenda-setting theory," and S. Robert Lichter, director of George
Mason's Center for Media and Public Studies.
Not so curiously, one of the main contentious points is nomenclature. The
mainstream term is "media bias." McCombs prefers to speak of "journalist's
predilections." Lichter prefers to discuss "journalist's tone." All agree
that the study of partisanship in media is an extremely complex field that
will requires several more years of data collection and will always be
subject to some hermeneutic disputes ... precisely because of the fluid
nature of partisanship in people's conscious expressions. (For example,
partisanship causes people to notice some things and ignore other things.)
However, Groeling notes that "professional definitons of newworthiness
cannot be ignored when looking at the disproportionate front-page coverage
of Obama." (page 28)
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