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Is The Liberal Media Bias A Myth?
By John A. Tures
Associate Professor of Political Science
LaGrange College
July 30, 2008 —
"Annoy the media…elect Bush." That was one of my favorite bumper stickers from the 1992 election, when President George Herbert Walker Bush was denied a second term. His supporters claimed that he got rougher treatment from the press, owing to the presence of a recession. But with all of the bad publicity the media gave Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton over his sex life and the draft, you had to wonder if they were right. Since my other major was communications (to match my political science degree), I thought I'd look into the subject. Not only did I uncover some surprising results, but the data may lead to a prediction about whether Illinois Senator Barack Obama or Arizona Senator John McCain will get better coverage from the Fourth Estate. To subject the test to the political mythbusting routine, I look at the last three presidential elections (1996, 2000 and 2004), using at least two different sources with three separate research designs. In 1996, Media Monitor (published by the Center for Media and Public Affairs) found that President Clinton got better coverage from the press. Nearly half of the overall sources analyzed gave him favorable coverage, while Kansas Senator Bob Dole only had 33% favorable news coverage. When it came to their record and issue positions, the disparity was similar. It got worse for the Kansas Republican when the story focused upon campaign performance. Clinton got a good story half the time, but Dole only caught a break 16 percent of the time. The situation was reversed in 2000, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Princeton Research Associates, as noted in a Los Angeles Times story (November 1, 2000). They found both Vice-President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush had nearly an equal number of stories in the press, but Bush had by far the better luck in press coverage. While Gore broke even, Bush had a 16 percentage point lead in having more favorable articles than unfavorable articles. This study looked at more than 1,100 stories from four newspapers, eight television news programs and five websites. So who won the 2004 election news coverage? The surprising answer is President George W. Bush, who received 43% positive evaluation stories as compared to 41% for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. More importantly, Bush had better numbers from ABC, CBS and of course Fox News, which gave him a whopping 28 point disparity in favorable news coverage to Kerry. Only NBC fawned upon Kerry, giving him almost a 2:1 advantage over the President in positive press, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs. And before you get any ideas about my citations, CMPA has been linked to some pretty conservative sources. Are there any lessons to be learned from these studies? First, there is no evidence from these three cases for a liberal media bias. Second, the media coverage favored the incumbent in the race (benefiting Clinton and Bush). Third, when there was no sitting president on the ballot, the party out of power won. This leads me to project that Senator Obama will get better press. Fourth, and most importantly, the candidate that received more favorable news coverage won in every race (including 2000, even though Gore won the popular vote). So unless McCain finds a way to woo the media better, his campaign will go down the television tubes.
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