How the media got Obama elected
 

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/

Very interesting, I didn't know some of the stuff about Obama/Biden myself.

One thing that struck me as incorrect off the bat...I didn't think Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism. If they're talking about the '88 Presidential campaign, I thought he stopped the campaign because of the aneurysm.

ETA: This type of stuff strikes me as being as ridiculous as the "Bush stole the election" criticisms that DS posted above. Both are, in my opinion, Monday Morning Quarterbacking at their worst.

There isn't a "roll eyes" smiley big enough for this one - seriously?

But plagiarism and aneurysm rhyme, silly, so it MUST be the same thing.

You didn't know it because it's not true.

I feel like this election from the media's end, more so than any other previous, involved a lot of "fact-checking," so if rumors ran rampant, it wasn't because of the media. It was a lot of people wanting to believe stupid stuff. This is true on both sides.

I see you've been reading the columnists in our newspaper. :p

If you walked down the street and asked 20 random people two questions:

1.) Which candidate spent $150,000 on clothes?

2.) Who is Nancy Pelosi?

(or any other combination of meaningless question vs. an important one) I guarantee that at least half of the people could answer the first question and not the second.

The point is, all of the people who answer #1 correctly won't be Democrats and all of the people who answer #2 correctly won't be Republicans.

I truly believe that the reason Palin was pointed at more frequently in this campaign is because she was McCain's choice. Not ours. Obama was running for president himself, and he made it to the top through votes. Palin was seen as a joke from day one, if only because nobody knew who she was, and McCain's decision was seen as one to simply get votes from women. And then on day two, all hell broke loose with the news of her pregnant daughter.

All four candidates fumbled, but the ones that were hit harder were Palin and Biden. And no one can sit here and say that Palin didn't dig her own grave. She couldn't even give Katie Couric the name of a newspaper or magazine she reads.

Basically, there are no conclusions to be reached from this website, and it has nothing to do with why Obama won the election. There were questions like "Who said that there were 57 states?" but nothing asking, "Where does Obama stand on the economic crisis plaguing the country?" And there will always be people who vote for candidates for ridiculous reasons, there's no getting around that. This year, it was because Obama was black, or because McCain was old. In four years, people might like the hairstyle of one of the presidential candidates... who knows!

If you're going to try and make an accusation like "The media is the reason Obama won," you at least need a more extensive interview process than asking 10 people random questions that have nothing to do with actual campaign policies and ideas.

Yeah, all those y/isms.. who can keep em straight?

Here you go:

http://www.galeon.com/mikeln/img/rolleyes.gif

Meanwhile, I thought that Newsweek's post-election article on the campaigns was interesting.

Far from perfect: www.howobamagotelected.com/
 

Several problems have been reported about both site and survey:
Take your pick of which link(s) to look at:
Zogby Engages in Apparent Push Polling for Right-Wing Website :
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...h-polling.html

An Interview with John Ziegler on the Zogby "Push Poll" :
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...-on-zogby.html

Zogby’s Misleading Poll of Obama Voters:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/zogb...ma-voters-459/

Zogby won’t duplicate Obama poll:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15829.html

Somewhat on topic - this is strictly a personal observation from my local standpoint, but I find it interesting and wonder how the rest of the nation is reporting.

I'm curious about the news coverage (daily paper) in your parts of the country regarding the economy. For the months leading up to the election, my paper, The Houston Chronicle, had the falling stock market on the front page, complete with pictures of stockbrokers with their hands over their faces, lamenting the end of the world. It was DOOM and GLOOM every day!!

It is surmised by many pundits that a poor economy helps democrats in the election.

So, now it is post election, and what kind of reporting is done regarding the stock market? There are small boxes that show the declines on the front page with - "story continued in section D (the business section)."

So, even though the market is lower than before, it is now back section news???

Are they trying to put the genie back in the box?!? Unfortunately, it may be too late!

Is this media manipulation?

I don't get any hard-copy papers, so to speak, as I read the local and national news online. But, it seems to me that it has still been front-page news in my area. I feel like I see the same picture every day, of the stockbroker with his hands on his forehead in a state of extreme duress. It's like they keep the same pose, just switch out the person.

From what I seen in my local papers, it could just be yours.
Mine have had stories about the stock market/economy on front page on a rather (depressing) regular basis.

My local paper "The Washington Post" still features articles in the A section within the first 5 pages regarding the economy along with those soon to be classic images of stockbrokers with their head in their hands or something to that effect.

Maybe where you are. Our paper of record has about 50-50 finance/politics. My hometown paper tends to have local news as the front; they're pretty insulated from a lot of what goes on with the economy, so it may not be that important to the editors.

I wonder how much of it is just saturation. Are people tired of hearing about the bad economy?

If there is one thing I can teach people on this website, after however many thousands of posts, it is this:

ZOGBY DOES SHITTY WORK.

From Wikipedia FWIW:

Main article: Joe Biden presidential campaign, 1988



"In 1987, Biden ran as a Democratic presidential candidate, formally declaring his candidacy at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987.[83] When the campaign began, Biden was considered a potentially strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability on the stump, his appeal to Baby Boomers, his high profile position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his fundraising appeal: he raised $1.7 million in the first quarter of 1987, more than any other candidate.[84][85] Biden received considerable attention in the summer of 1986 when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the Reagan administration's support of South Africa, which continued to support a system of apartheid.[86]

By August 1987, Biden's campaign, whose messaging was confused due to staff rivalries,[87] had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis and Richard Gephardt,[84] although he had still raised more funds than all candidates but Dukakis, and was seeing an upturn in Iowa polls.[88][85] In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party.[89] Kinnock’s speech included the lines:

"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?"

While Biden’s speech included the lines:

"I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?"

Though Biden had cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation many times before, he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 Iowa State Fair debate in question or in another appearance.[90][91] While political speeches often appropriate ideas and language from each other, Biden's use came under more scrutiny because he somewhat distorted his own family's background in order to match Kinnock's.[5][91]

A few days later, Biden's plagiarism incident in law school came to light.[15] It was also revealed that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, Biden had inaccurately recollected graduating in the "top half" of his class when he actually graduated 76th from 85, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and had received three degrees in college.[92] In fact, he had earned a single B.A. with a double major in history and political science, and had received a half scholarship to law school based on financial need with some additional assistance based in part upon academics.[92]

The Kinnock and school revelations were magnified by the limited amount of other news about the nomination race at the time,[93] when most of the public were not yet paying attention to any of the campaigns; Biden thus fell into what Washington Post writer Paul Taylor described as that year's trend, a "trial by media ordeal".[94] Biden lacked a strong demographic or political group of support to help him survive the crisis.[88][95] He withdrew from the nomination race on September 23, 1987, saying his candidacy had been overrun by "the exaggerated shadow" of his past mistakes.[96] After Biden withdrew from the race, it was revealed that the Dukakis campaign had secretly made a video showcasing the Biden–Kinnock comparison and distributed it to news outlets.[97] Also later in 1987, the Delaware Supreme Court's Board of Professional Responsibility cleared Biden of the law school plagiarism charges regarding his standing as a lawyer, saying Biden had "not violated any rules".[98]"


FWIW: About the aneurysm, again from Wikipedia: "Biden had felt poorly physically during parts of the campaign, suffering repeated headaches and at one point in September 1987 having to halt a speech in New Hampshire for 15 minutes after feeling faint.[27] In February 1988, he suffered the first of two brain aneurysms that required life-saving surgery and seven months away from the Senate in order to convalesce from.[35][36][37] Biden and others would speculate that had his campaign not ended early, the aneurysms might have been more severe or detected later and that he might not have lived out the year.[7][27]"

I think the poll question had it right. But then I think the media played a huge role in this election. The coverage was in no way equally as critical of the candidates.

What wasn't true as reported in the poll? The bit about Sarah Palin seeing Alaska from her house? EATA: Even if the points about Obama/Biden are debatable, it seems that people should have been able to associate the claim with a candidate.

I don't think that website is genius or anything and I'm not trying
to promote Zogby polling, but I don't think the info in the poll questions is as inaccurate/problematic as you seem to suggest..

I'm using wikipedia for ease:

Obama ran for State Senator when Alice Palmer decided to run for Congress in a 1995 special election, and he received her endorsement.[2] After finishing third in the primary, which was won by Jesse Jackson, Jr., Palmer returned to request that Obama drop out of the race and let her run again for the seat.[3] Obama declined, and Palmer decided to run against him. Prior to the primary, Obama challenged the validity of ballot petition signatures for his opponents, resulting in their exclusion from the ballot and allowing him to run unopposed in the primary.[2][4] Obama won the heavily Democratic 13th district by a large margin.[4] He was easily reelected in 1998, and again in 2002 (after redistricting to span Chicago lakefront neighborhoods from the Gold Coast south to South Chicago).[2][5]

The coal industry comment seems to pull from multiple sources and maybe unfairly out of context but it's hard to say that he didn't put that idea out there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwBbl6RoIs (the label makes me laugh)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxnT5tHVIo

ETA: here's Ayer's acknowledging Obama having a reception in his home when he started his state career: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/S...6251086&page=2

I think the issue isn't that the media needed to be hammering the weak, crappy stories about Obama and Biden necessarily, but if you are going to hammer McCain about his houses and Palin about whatever, and it's going to run through multiple news cycles, it's somewhat perplexing that equally potentially inflammatory stories about Obama and Biden didn't get the same play in the mainstream press, especially from the big networks in TV coverage. I think there are instances that actually gave more coverage of the Obama/Biden response to an issue being raised than there ever was to the original issue. The news would essentially be Obama/Biden campaign points. The coal issue may be a good case in point. Wouldn't an unbiased press been willing to fully report the economic implications of Obama's proposed energy policies?

We can talk about the validity of the reasons why, but what this maybe crappy poll and website was trying to point out was that there may have been an imbalance in the message that got out.

One thing that people seems to forget, Obama went through a harsher and longer primary. Everything that could've came out about Obama came out during the primary. By the time the election came around, there was nothing new to talk about. It was the same thing with McCain. However, Palin is a different story. She was a clean slate and with McCain and Obama completely vetted out, Palin was the next person to be vetted.

Nothing about biases, just that Palin was an unknown and she had a story to be told. McCain camp messed up royally and did not told the story well.

well....that's pretty much why I posted the link and left nary a comment....lol

Hear, Hear!!!!;):D

I disagree. Other than the Reverend Wright stuff, I don't think most Obama stuff got much actually critical coverage even in the primary by the traditional media, to the point that the Clinton folks were pretty angry about it. I also think Biden got off really lightly considering how many ridiculous things he said during the campaign. If you know about them, it might be a reflection of your willingness to watch Fox or your reading on the internet.

It may be possible to justify extra scrutiny of Palin from her nomination onward for the reason you suggest. But it doesn't really explain why there was so little coverage of any of her actual governance. I think people know troopergate, Wasilla rape kits, and maybe interest in removing books from the Wasilla. They also know the fact checking on the Bridge to Nowhere story. Can anyone report any other action by Palin in her elective history? Does that make sense if it's an unbiased press?

We need to know about her husband's flirtation with the Alaska Party and hear critics from the lower 48 of her Predator Control programs, but nothing about successful programs that contributed to her initially high approval ratings in Alaska?

Is it really reasonable to just assume that there weren't any?

It's all sensationalism, and I for one am tired of it. In my previous post, I noted that this nonsense happened on both sides. Maybe the media played a role in it, maybe it didn't. It's a moo point now. Obama won by a virtual landslide.

But I've noticed that you like to have the last word when we're discussing a topic. I'll let you have that, since it's obviously more important to you than it is to me.

By the way? Still not changing my signature.

Look, I'm as conservative as anyone, but other than a show or two (Today show/Matt Lauer springs to mind), I didn't see any overwhelming bias either way. I thought the networks were pretty fair on everything.

A part of it could also have been the cooperation given by the campaigns. It seemed that Obama's camp was a bit more cooperative than McCain's camp. Now, a lot of those times Obama, Biden, etc. were simply offering platitudes and sound bites, but it was something. I thought McCain's camp should have done a lot more to try to control the message going out to the public, and to shape the media coverage. Maybe that's the ex-journalist/media relations person in me...

This video is trying to point out that voters are often misinformed, easy manipulated, and uneducated on their vote...
...
...
...
Is it really trying to point out something new to us?

Selection bias at its worst - what do we know about Obama's 'governance' as a Senator? As a State Senator? How much of this was produced by the media?

Modern political campaigns are dominated by negativity, to the point where it's "who is the least bad?" on some level. We don't remember "good" things - we note bad. It's classic selection bias.

Which is why I think it's all the more important that there were many more negative stories on McCain/Palin than positive ones.

Have we posted this here before? The Pew Research thing about the campaign?
http://www.journalism.org/node/13307


ETA: Remember the conservative press's commentary about Obama's voting "present"? I don't think Palin's record is as complicated. I also think that coverage of Obama's record wasn't going to be as helpful to him as focusing only on his campaign message. I'm sure I'm guilty of my own selection bias, and I'm not trying to suggest a vast media conspiracy. I just think that this election was particularly bad in terms of a failure to provide good quality, unbiased coverage of both tickets.

I think you're more willing to fault McCain/Palin than I am. I tend to think it the media's job to avoid being controlled more by one campaign. While an argument can be made the Palin's contacts with the press were limited (and, at least in the widely seen interviews, terrible), it's harder to say that about McCain.

But the research summary by Pew seems to say that the stories were reactive, and it doesn't make any conclusions as to whether those stories affected the voters. Additionally, it seems pretty broad in what it cites as "negative" and "positive" stories. From my reading, a story that Obama was doing well in the polls would be classified as "positive," while a story saying that McCain's numbers were falling would be "negative."

Also, I'm not saying that the media was "controlled" by a campaign, so to speak. But, the campaigns have a lot of power to shape the story, to shape the coverage. Again, I've seen both sides of it, albeit from a much more limited scale (in both reporting and media relations). But, the opportunity is there for a campaign to shape the news cycle to a certain extent, and Obama and his people did a better job of seizing that opportunity.

I think some of the stories were reactive, but I don't think it explains the complete imbalance.

I agree that there was a more cooperative role between Obama's campaign and the media, but I tend to assume this is because of media behavior and you assume it's because of campaign behavior. Without knowing what efforts the McCain campaign made, it's hard to really know.

EATA: I'm editing this again. If you look at page two of the report, it breaks down all the stories by type so you can see that while the coverage of polls was positive for Obama, so was almost everything else. And maybe offering support from your point about the failures of the McCain campaign, the only stories that were overwhelmingly negative for Obama were reports on McCain's attacks on Obama. But go to page three of the report and see that McCain got some of his worst negative coverage when he started to attack Obama.

I don't know a whole lot of people who have worked on either campaign, or who have worked in high enough positions to know, but my experience with other campaigns (from the national to state levels) is that it works this way because of campaign behavior. It depends a lot on the work of the policy and communications people, and how they shape the relationships.

I'll check out the other parts of the report when I have a chance, but just wanted to make that point.

Again - let's say there are 9 things that McCain did that were "negative" or had negative connotation for his campaign, and 1 thing that Obama did . . . would you thus be upset with a 3:1 ratio of good:bad stories?

You're simply not allowing for context here - it seems pretty clear that things like Palin's gaffes (real or perceived) were more pressing than anything the Obama/Biden camp did, and much more timely. Ayers got a lot of press time, but it happened years ago - it wasn't an ongoing story.

I guess I just don't see how you've proven any imbalance that can't be explained away by mitigating factors.

And I can't see how you aren't defining mitigating factors as anything that might justify the imbalance.

Think about the nutty stuff Biden said. How was it less pressing than what Palin said?

It's less "pressing" because of the nature of Palin's public vetting - I don't see why you're up in arms that "new News" takes precedent over "old News" during any given cycle. Additionally, the handling of Palin really made context control difficult - all you had were two interviews that went mediocre-to-poor, then a press corps scrambling to find any story to put up and fill the audience's hunger. That is a fault on the part of the McCain camp, and it appears to have had significant influence on which stories were reported (and even how). To separate effect from cause seems spurious at best.

We can do this for every point, if you'd like, but it won't change the fact that you're interpreting what is essentially a market-based field (news reporting, based on ad revenue and viewer demand) as something that has an implicit bias toward Obama. I mean, go ahead with that, but I don't think it's nearly that cut-and-dried, and this may very well violate Occam's Razor.

I think individual members of the media allowed their own preferences in candidates to overtake doing a thorough and impartial job reporting on the candidates.

I don't think this interpretation violates Occam's Razor.

Also, Palin was a virtual unknown, and we all wanted to get as much information about her as possible. Joe Biden, we knew stuff about. We all knew he was kinda batshit. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was a total mystery!

When I went on my vacation to Puerto Rico the Thursday before Labor Day, McCain hadn't picked a running mate. I didn't follow the news because I was on the beach drinking mojitos the whole weekend. So, when I got back to the mainland, not only had McCain selected a running mate, she was a virtual unknown with a LOT of crazy stuff going on. So, even though I ended up not liking her, I was very hungry for information about her from the beginning. I bet this happened to some extent with the media.

Exactly - when you combine the fact that Palin was a newcomer on the national political scene, with the mismanagement by the McCain/Palin communications people, it just added up to trouble. Biden has 20-something years of reports of how he is a hothead. When you introduce someone to the national electorate at such a high level, the scrutiny is going to be higher.

This, except I was at work for the whole weekend, not on a beach.

The new is always fascinating, and the Palin coverage was new. I just think that the news producers were sitting there going, we could cover this minor slip up that McCain made, or this one from Biden/Obama, or we could cover the NEW vice presidential nominee's potentially scandalous history. What do you think they would go for? The media craves any scandal.

Who? How? You really think that the multiple layers of editorial control let this become a widespread phenomenon?

You really think that there's one segment of the American workforce (main-stream media) that is just magically overrun by Democrats, and ones without any apparent sense of journalistic ethics at that?

That's kind of where I'm going with the Occam's Razor issue - since the nation as a whole (and particularly the college-educated portion, of which journalists would be drawn) leaned Obama, you should expect journalists to as well, but I just don't see it as endemic beyond that simple fact. Certainly nothing to be aghast at, or that can't be seen as having massive contribution from an awkward McCain campaign.