The LA Times' On the Media column points out a provocative study from (my old employer) the Center on Media and Public Affairs that seems to deflate the conventional wisdom that Obama is benefiting from favorable media coverage. The center classified statements about the candidates from the nightly network newscasts over the past six weeks as either "positive" or "negative" (or neutral) and found "when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative." McCain wasn't exactly coddled, but the split measured by CMPA was far less dramatic: "43% of the statements positive and 57% negative."
My job at CMPA was to provide critical analysis of popular studies; I tended to find that most polls and studies quoted in popular media are not in themselves flawed or dishonest, but that writers and readers tended to emphasize the topline results, without looking at the ways in which methodology skews those results. Like, for instance, with this study. The authors admit that "most on-air statements during that time could not be classified as positive or negative," and that, in fact, found "less than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three networks combined." (I actually think that this apparent LACK of bias should be the real headline of the study.) Let's be generous and say that the average was about 1.5 "opinionated" statements a night -- that's a grand total of about 60 "biased" statements since the study began on June 8. The article doesn't provide a break down for how the total number of biased statements split between the candidates, but another recent study of the evening news found that Obama received about 70 percent of all campaign coverage and McCain just under 30 percent. Applying that basic proportion to the 60-something biased statements uttered in the past month and a half, you get 40 statements about Obama and 20 about McCain.
Compared to the massive amounts of political coverage -- and opinion -- available in the media over all, this is not a particularly significant sample.
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Obama and his family have been on the cover of both Us and People in the past month, in addition to Obama having snagged glamorous portraits on the covers of Esquire, Rolling Stone and (in multiple instances) Time and Newsweek.
The power of celebrity as a media influence, as every American knows, transcends that of politicians. They get away with more, they earn more, we pay attention to them more. The Obamas are very much on their way to becoming the Bradgelina of the White House, and part of me is thrilled. It's been a long time since Americans paid that much attention to the occupants of 1600 Penn. And then there's the part of me that worries about what happens if we are as tolerant of politicians as we are of movie stars, or if we forget that, in the end, both celebrities and politicians work for us. Angelina may have a face that could launch a thousand ships, but she can't actually start a war.
