johnny dollar's archive: may-june 2008

For current entries see johnnydollar.us.

It took us two and a half years to make it to 500,000. After 18 more months, another milestone:

Thanks to our readers, commenters, fans, and enemies who have made it possible.

The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released its report on media coverage of the 2008 primary election. As always it covers all aspects of the media and breaks down coverage of each candidate with meticulous care. But we are primarily concerned with its findings regarding cable news, particularly the differences between the major channels:

MSNBC offered the most positive assessments of each of the candidate when it came to their personal narratives. Fox News was the toughest on McCain and Clinton and almost as positive about Obama’s personal themes as MSNBC. Fox News also spent significantly more time discussing McCain’s campaign than either of the other networks. CNN fell in between the other two.

The PEJ tells us that on MSNBC:

Obama and Clinton received roughly equally positive narratives (70% for Obama and 72% for Clinton). The tilt was not as heavily for McCain (53%) but that was still better coverage than he received on either of the other two cable channels.... The biggest factor for Obama’s positive coverage on MSNBC was less coverage of the assertion that he is too inexperienced to be president. Only 7% of the Obama themes on MSNBC made this claim compared with 17% on Fox News and 19% on CNN.

As for the Cable News Network, the findings included:

Coverage of Clinton’s personal narrative was nearly as positive as on MSNBC, an overwhelming 70% of all assertions studied. McCain’s personal message was almost evenly balanced (49% positive and 51% negative), versus a negative tilt on Fox (55% negative) and a positive one on MSNBC (53% positive) Obama, on the other hand, found CNN to be much tougher on his campaign than either of the other channels.

And then there is Fox News. Some of the PEJ's myth-busting findings will be difficult to reconcile with the usual talking points of the Fox haters:

Fox News was the harshest of the three channels on the presumptive Republican nominee. More than half (55%) of the prominent personal statements about McCain were negative... In its criticism, Fox News devoted more overall attention to McCain compared with the other cable channels, nearly the same attention it gave the two leading Democrats, 36% for McCain, 37% for Clinton and 39% for Obama. Both CNN and MSNBC, on the other hand, devoted far less of their coverage to the McCain campaign than they did to Clinton’s or Obama’s. Fox News was also more positive in its portrayal of Obama’s major personal narrative than either McCain or Clinton. Fully 69% of the assertions about Obama personally were positive, a number that rivals what he received on MSNBC (70%).

Read the whole thing.