Washington Post Ombudsman: Election Coverage Was Superficial, And Biased For Obama

• November 9, 2008

Nice of them to tell us this after the election.

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this seems like an admission of ageism:

Post reporters, photographers and editors — like most of the national news media — found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

Obama is young. McCain is old. Thus, Obama gets more coverage. Though that doesn’t exactly explain the paucity of in-depth, positive coverage young and vibrant newcomer Sarah Palin got.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Politics

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Kat

McCain was pushing the same policies as Bush, which everyone already concluded were negative

I disagree with this.

McCain is an idiot which is why most people didn’t vote for him who might have otherwise done so.

It’s saying something that the election was this close given that Obama (IMO) was essentially running against a vacuum.
bill-tb

Awwww, really, I don’t notice. Oh wait, yes I did, that’s why the newspapers or magazines don’t show up in my mailbox anymore. Look at all the trees saved.
robert108

It is totally obvious why Barack Obama got more positive coverage than the Republicans….McCain was pushing the same policies as Bush, which everyone already concluded were negative.

Nice try, kid, but explain this: Why didn’t the MSM vet Obama about his past, his background, including cocaine use, possible homo activities, his close and long term association with America hater “God Damn America Wright”, his attending school in Indonesia while registered as a Muslim, his shady property deals with a convicted felon, his association with crooked agitators in ACORN, his questionable birth certificate and his commie teachers and role models? Hmmm?
BTW, McCain wasn’t “following Bush policies” any more than Obama is right now, so you might try explaining that fact.
robert108

Besides, the task of the media is to report the news, not follow a set of prejudices, like you described in your rationalization for the media failing to do its job of good reporting.
Kat

It is totally obvious why Barack Obama got more positive coverage than the Republicans….McCain was pushing the same policies as Bush, which everyone already concluded were negative. McCain ran a negative campaign. Obama talked about America and the constitution and bringing people together and had the ideas and initiatives that we have been waiting for for almost a half a century. If gargamel was running against papa smurf, don’t you think gargamel would get more negative press? Not because the press is bias, but because gargmel is negative.
welder4

I read the entire article and what I got out of it is that it was a cover for not exposing Obama and the woman that was the ombudsman did a double speak job of it . They were covering them selves so as to get to much flack from John Q Public.

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Washington Post Ombudsman: Election Coverage Was Superficial, And Biased For Obama

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