How the media got Obama elected

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

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.

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.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

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.

I believe that members of the traditional media skew Democratic, yes, and I believe it happens at a different rate than simply the overall vote this year would reflect. I think that some occupations attract a higher percentage of people with a similar basic mindset. ( ETA: I'm not implying some sort of hive mind or anything for journalists, just that the traits that attract people to the field may also be more likely to make Democratic politics more attractive.) For a counter example, I think that Baptist preachers probably skew Republican.

I believe that people allowed themselves to believe that the coverage they were providing was appropriate based on the relative merits, as they saw them, of the two candidates, and I think this bias ended up being pervasive.

What I kind of expect to see is that the next time a Republican wins the presidency, if Pew publishes a similar report, we'll see that success on the campaign trail and novelty in the news cycle really doesn't explain the difference in the tone in coverage.