Washington Post Ombudsman: Too Much Obama
Washington Post ombudswoman Deborah Howell has some sharp things to say about the disparity in coverage between John McCain and Barack Obama:
Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party’s presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain—and therefore there’s more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good.
In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates’ agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan. . . .
This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.
The big question is whether or not all this attention on Obama is really all that bad for McCain. Certainly the McCain campaign would like better opportunities to get their message out, but all this scrutiny on Obama hasn’t exactly resulted in a lot of extra support for his campaign. Obama should be running away with the race, but it remains essentially tied.
Meaning that the more people see of Obama the less they seem to like him.
