O'REALLY? OR:
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE RIDICULED, DON'T ACT RIDICULOUS.
We were more than ready to shut up about the election, but when we made our regular online run through the news, including Fox News—again, we're trying very hard to be fair, and to see what the righties are saying to balance the lefties—we came across this Bill O'Reilly piece: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445548,00.html, Talking Points, Why McCain Continues to Run Behind Obama, Friday, October 31, 2008, by Bill O'Reilly.
After reading it, we now have a punctuation puzzler: do we put the ironic quotation marks around "fair and balanced" or around "journalism"? It looks strange to write "fair and balanced" "journalism".
O'Reilly asserts that Obama is ahead for two reasons: he's raised more money and the media is biased. Let's go all hypercritical up in here, shall we?
O'REILLY: OBAMA IS LEADING BECAUSE OF MONEY AND MEDIA BIAS
Money Talks, the Other Stuff Walks
First, let's talk about the money. O'Reilly did not offer any insight or analysis about this in the body of his piece.
What might his silence suggest, beyond space/word limitations (which should not be a factor for the Factor in cyberspace)? Here's a possibility: O'Reilly can't attack Obama on the money issue, because Obama's amassed a stunning reservoir of cash from an unprecedented groundswell of small donors. O'Reilly has nothing to offer in response; he's tacitly acknowledged that regular people have practiced democracy in the most fundamental way—they've voted with their dollars.
The Biased Media Favors Obama
The particular problem with this O'Reilly piece—wrapped in the Fox "fair and balanced" flag—is his "proof" that media bias is skewing the election in favor of Obama. O'Reilly writes: "In addition to the money, it's now certain that the American media has given Barack Obama an enormous advantage. According to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, John McCain's getting hosed big time." [HCO: More about O'Reilly's choice of the word "given" later.]
HCO hungers for fair, thirsts for balance. So, we looked up the study. Although O'Reilly doesn't specify the study he refers to, there are actually two of them, which we found at journalism.org: The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (http://journalism.org/node/13436; The Color of News, October 29, 2008, How Different Media Have Covered the General Election), and its predecessor, Winning the Media Campaign, Barack Obama, October 22, 2008 at http://journalism.org/node/13308.
The more recent study, as O'Reilly suggests, notes that "In cable,…there now really is an ideological divide between two of the three channels, at least in their coverage of the campaign." However, Mr. O'Reilly's presentation and interpretation of these studies—offered in his piece as facts—is in many important ways at odds with what they actually said.
Here's a table laying it all out:
WHAT O'REILLY SAID | WHAT THE STUDIES ACTUALLY SAID | HCO COMMENT |
Zzzz… | 10.29.08: When it comes to coverage of the campaign for president 2008, where one goes for news makes a difference. | One person's "fair and balanced" = another person's bias. |
In all of the media studied, 57 percent of the stories on McCain were negative, 29 percent negative for Obama. | 10.22.08 Much of the increased attention for McCain derived from actions by the senator himself, actions that, in the end, generated mostly negative assessments. [Emphasis ours.] ...For McCain, coverage began positively, but turned sharply negative with McCain's reaction to the crisis in the financial markets. As he took increasingly bolder steps to try and reverse the direction of the polls, the coverage only worsened. Attempts to turn the dialogue away from the economy through attacks on Obama's character did hurt Obama's media coverage, but McCain's was even more negative. | Pokes holes in the "inherent bias" cause-and-effect argument. |
Newspapers are very unfair: 69 percent of the reporting on McCain negative, as opposed to 28 percent negative for Obama. | 10.29.08: …on the front pages of newspapers, which often have the day-after story, things look tougher for John McCain than they tend to in the media overall. | |
NBC News is the most biased news agency by far…. On the broadcast side -- that's primarily Brian Williams and "The Today Show" -- 54 percent of the stories about McCain were negative, 21 percent of Obama stories were negative. | 10.29.08: On the evening newscasts of the three traditional networks, in contrast, there is no such ideological split. Indeed, on the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC, coverage tends to be more neutral and generally less negative than elsewhere. …And on NBC News programs, there was no reflection of the tendency of its cable sibling MSNBC toward more favorable coverage of Democrats and more negative of Republicans than the norm. …The distinct tone of MSNBC—more positive toward Democrats and more negative toward Republicans—was not reflected in the coverage of its broadcast sibling, NBC News. Even though it has correspondents appear on their cable shows and even anchor some programs on there, the broadcast channel showed no such ideological tilt. Indeed, NBC's coverage of Palin was the most positive of any TV organization studied, including Fox News. [Emphasis ours.] …At night, the newscasts of the three traditional broadcast networks stood out for being more neutral—and also less negative—than most other news outlets. The morning shows of the networks, by contrast, more closely resembled the media generally in tone….Overall, 44% of the morning show stories were clearly negative, compared with 34% on the nightly news and 42% in the press overall. | He's got it right on the morning show side. On the broadcast side, looks like an oopsie on O'Reilly. |
On MSNBC, it's an absolute scandal: 73 percent of the stories on McCain negative, 14 percent negative toward Obama. | 10.29.08: correct on the facts. | MSNBC effectively discredited as a trustworthy source of unbiased political news. |
Thus a huge American corporation, General Electric, which owns NBC, is using its money and power to benefit a presidential candidate. That is a gross violation of the spirit of the constitutional powers given to a free press. | NA | Pot versus Kettle. In light of the unmistakable and historical GOP big-business alignment, this comment is—well, silly. |
The three men behind this corruption are GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, NBC News boss Jeff Zucker and NBC News chief Steve Capus. These three calculated that by openly supporting Obama…they could lure millions of Obama supporters and make money. | NA | Another conspiracy found festering under the rocks. And Rupert Murdoch's calculus in creating Fox News was…? |
Now, much of the other media covers for NBC, unfortunately. The Associated Press article about the press study had this headline: "NBC News doesn't follow MSNBC's left drift." But that's a bit misleading. The article written by committed leftist David Bauder says that the study found no hint that NBC's coverage was worse than the media as a whole. But, as we mentioned, the media as a whole is far more negative toward McCain than Obama. | 10.29.08 [repeated from above]: …on NBC News programs, there was no reflection of the tendency of its cable sibling MSNBC toward more favorable coverage of Democrats and more negative of Republicans than the norm. …The distinct tone of MSNBC—more positive toward Democrats and more negative toward Republicans—was not reflected in the coverage of its broadcast sibling, NBC News. | O'Reilly has lost his own "facts" in his stilted rant. Mr. Bauder has, to all appearances, accurately portrayed what the study actually said. O'Reilly, on the one hand, uses the Pew research to make his case that media in general and NBC in particular is biased against McCain, then argues against the Pew research when a liberal uses it. And then he cites it as a case of the other media "covering" for NBC. Bad on O'Reilly, unfortunately. |
As for FNC, the study found that 40 percent of our reporting was negative to McCain and 40 percent was negative about Obama. Whoa, sounds fair and balanced to me. | 10.29.08: On the Fox News Channel, the coverage of the presidential candidates is something of a mirror image of that seen on MSNBC. On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm (40% of stories vs. 29% overall) and less positive (25% of stories vs. 36% generally). For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive (22% vs. 14% in the press overall) and substantially less negative (40% vs. 57% in the press overall). Yet even here, his negative stories outweighed positive ones by almost 2 to 1. [Emphasis ours.] | Whoa yourself! The findings align but O'Reilly's conclusion is a non sequitur. (See our conclusion below.) |
Zzzzzz… | 10.22.08: One question likely to be posed is whether these findings provide evidence that the news media are pro-Obama. Is there some element in these numbers that reflects a rooting by journalists for Obama and against McCain, unconscious or otherwise? …Obama's coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well. Nor are these numbers different than what we have seen before. Obama's numbers are similar to what we saw for John Kerry four years ago as he began rising in the polls, and McCain's numbers are almost identical to what we saw eight years ago for Democrat Al Gore. What the findings also reveal is the reinforcing—rather than press-generated—effects of media. We see a repeating pattern here in which the press first offers a stenographic account of candidate rhetoric and behavior, while also on the watch for misstatements and gaffes. Then, in a secondary reaction, it measures the political impact of what it has reported. …Throughout the race, critics have contended that the media were besotted with Barack Obama's candidacy…. [But] the evidence suggests something more complicated than that. Coverage of Obama since the conventions has been more positive than negative, but it has also been almost as neutral or mixed. In all, 36% of stories about Obama have been positive, vs. 35% that have been neutral. And 29% have been negative. …The last week of the study (Oct. 12-16), which included the final presidential debate, coverage of Obama became more positive again (50% positive, vs. 19% negative and 31% neutral). …The rare instances where Obama was seen to have misspoken on the stump also hurt. …In short, the financial crisis and particularly Obama's steadier reaction to it in relation to McCain's were clearly a turning point in the media coverage. That more positive coverage was then reflected in the polls, which in turn were reinforced in the horse race coverage that played off those polls. In that sense, the data show, Obama was the beneficiary of the tactical, strategic bias of the press. | Careful when you cherry pick certain facts and ignore the others. The studies show Obama has taken a hit when he deserved to. They also indicated that the media is not so much the aboriginal source of biased coverage—as O'Reilly asserts—but jumping on the bandwagon. |
CONCLUSION
We'll accept O'Reilly's premise that overall, the mass media is left of center while the country is right of center. For O'Reilly (and others of a simlar stripe) this disconnect is a disaster, and indicates that something calculated and sinister is going on. But this conclusion is intellectually lazy, superficial, and doesn't follow—for several reasons.
First, even conceding the media's liberal tilt, the heavy disproportion of negative coverage against McCain does not mean that those reports are inherently unfair. The Pew studies suggest a much more complicated picture, and instead indicate that when any of the candidates mess up, the negative reports intensify. (Please note, in this regard, the telling Pew comment that Obama has misspoken only in "rare instances.")
Second, the fact that Fox reported an equal percentage of 40% negative stories for Obama and McCain does not mean Fox is fair or balanced. How does "one for me, one for you" represent responsible journalism? This is not an "equal time" calculation. The Pew studies offer more persuasive insight, based on the finding that Fox and MSNBC are a similarly biased "mirror images": even though a right-biased Fox is trying like hell to ferret out positives for McCain and negatives for Obama, the best Fox can muster is two negative McCain stories for every positive one.
Third, speaking plainly does not equal speaking honestly and bluster is not a suitable substitute for thinking. O'Reilly has cherry picked the Pew studies but ignored their core lessons.
At the end of the day, the Pew studies lead to a very different, more plausible conclusion than O'Reilly's. Here it is: the media hasn't "given" Obama anything that Kerry and Gore didn't have. If McCain loses, his campaign, his choices, and his actions—not a stacked deck—are to blame. He'd have turned the hose on himself "big time" and earned it.
In his piece, O'Reilly writes, "I feel like John McCain." If so, he's earned it.
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