Majority of reporting
on McCain is negative

HERE'S SOMETHING that should not come as a surprise to you. John McCain has been receiving heavily unfavorable news coverage. Can you imagine? What a stunner.

That conclusion comes from Pew Research, which examined news coverage, not op-ed or opinion pieces, and said the McCain bashing by the media is getting even worse, with the number of unfavorable over favorable reports continuing to grow.

The Pew report says the coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable, and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed . . .

(cont'd from front page) favorable ones by a factor of more than three-to-one, the most unfavorable of all four candidates, according to the study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Pew concluded that 57 percent of the news stories about McCain were negative in nature while less than 14 percent were positive.

Obama? Well, Pew found 36 percent of the stories about him were clearly positive in tone while 35 percent were neutral or mixed. Only 29 percent were negative.

The report also seems to point to a circular pattern of reporting and polls. 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.

And we might add, they then issue frothy reports on the poll numbers they have so effectively modeled and influenced which in turn affects the next round of polling and reporting. Never mind that the poll numbers often themselves are biased or completely bogus. Who loses? All of us.

Our democracy, our Republic, cannot long survive a news media that in far too many instances has become the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Without fair and accurate information, without facts, without the truth, how are we to properly choose the man or woman who will lead this nation?

The media believe most Americans are stupid. In their zeal, they have chosen for us.