Top Troubling Tropes of Campaign '08

The media-created narratives that derail election coverage

Not only do journalists organize the election story around the question--not terribly helpful to voters--of who's up and who's down, they largely base their evaluation of the race on shallow image-based narratives that the media construct themselves: Barack Obama is an "elitist" who might not "get the way we live" (Extra!, 7=8/08), while John McCain is a straight-talking "maverick" (Extra!, 5=6/08). Though these tropes are treated by establishment news ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

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Review

David Agnew
4.7
by David Agnew - Oct. 25, 2008

Compared to much of the journalism out there (as documented in the article), this is high-quality. I do wonder if it accurately represents the ratio of bias re: the candidates, as it indicates a general right-wing media bias - which I believe to be the case, 'tho this article doesn't present statistics to show that.

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David's Rating

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4.7

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