There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.
As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.
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The Politico tastefully stands up for itself and other peer publications against claims of media bias toward Barack Obama. A highly recommended read for its originality and self-awareness. It's not often that news organizations are this candid with their readers, explaining their practices and when necessary justifying them. The Politico could have offered more concrete evidence to support some of its argument, but as it stands this is an effective piece.
The article and video come across as honest introspection. The observations about political inclinations of their journalists are not necessarily identical to what you might find at the WSJ, CNN, FOX newsrooms; some publications are strongly biased to the right or far right.
If you are well informed and concerned about the problems in society and the world ( as one might hope for in a journalist ) then there is an inclination to hope for positive change and to be more progressive. There should be no need to even suggest an apology. And if a candidate is pandering for disinformed votes, that makes the candidate a special kind of ho, and they should be hosed.
in contrast to the ABC piece on media bias (see links), Politico serves up a convincing analysis that's humble, nuanced, and reasonably explanatory. The assertions need to be back up, and I'd love to see some cogent opposing viewpoints, but this piece is worth the read.
I'm a registered Republican--as the late great icon Hugh Sidey, White House bureau chief for Time, once quipped--probably the only journalism director in the country with that political affiliation. But this article--interpretative journalism, by the way--is basically accurate and balanced, especially describing investigative reporters (which I still do, by the way).
The best investigative reporters are conditioned to care more about the coverage and less about our biases--or who wins, for that matter. In fact, we sometimes overcompensate for those biases in the interest of fairness. And The Politico does that more often than not, with a sense of humor and self-effacement, as the writing here also illustrates.
Most political reporters (investigative journalists tend to have a different psychological makeup) are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being ... More »
In this article, Politico's chiefs explain some subtle aspects of media bias and reporting phenomena surrounding election reporting. It's well written and clarifying. To show additional context, it would have been interesting the read from other reporters on staff, or even from other online news outlets, about their takes on this; including quotations from others would have made this piece seem like less of a two-person editorial and more like media-wide reflection. That being said, the authors explain something key about reporting: being unbiased doesn't mean reporting on everyone in the same positive light -- it means reporting facts as they are, even when they show a person or a situation in a negative way.
A more careful analysis of the factors the authors identify as shaping the campaign coverage would have made the arguments more convincing, but the result certainly wouldn't be as readable.
This is a well written journalistic story, which discusses the alleged bias. The author has tried to write as openly as possible. This is good journalism.
It seems that loser always try to find others that they think are responsible. No one thinks they were the one who lost. It must be someone else.
This is a good explanation of how journalists attempt to report "objectively" on both sides of the debate. Few journalists can resist reporting on the "horse race" aspects of the campaign, or avoid the tendency to get caught up in the dynamics, but the greater problem is the "false balance" that many journalists fall for. The classic example is reporting that some believe the earth is round, others believe it is flat. We report, you decide. What is missing from this article is the journalists' general revulsion at the sleazy, deceptive campaigns run by the Republican party, starting with Lee Atwater's dirty tricks under Richard Nixon. His protege Karl Rove continued the practice and John McCain has done more of the ... More »
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