Friday, November 2, 2007

Media Study

A new study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy has found that the media is biased towards Democrats.
Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative
In a related study, The Center For The Obvious has found that more people tend to wear coats during the Winter months than during the Summer months and that humans tend to buy more CD's than dogs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"humans tend to buy more CD's than dogs"
um... that would be because CD's stack better than dogs!
I've got a few thousand CD's/DVD's in the back room of my flat, I don't think I could stack that many dogs in there! (:P

Christopher Lee said...

No. Dogs don't buy as many CD's as humans.

Anonymous said...

You don't for a second think I was serious?
Your assertion "humans tend to buy more CD's than dogs" has a degree of ambiguity in it. I know what meaning you wanted to convey, but chose to have a bit of harmless fun, and explore the other possible meaning of the statement - that the number of cd's purchased by humans is greater than number of dogs purchased by humans!

If you need a reason (other than the opportunity for a bad joke), it was that you were taking about things being 'obvious'. I think there is danger in fixating on the obvious, rather than looking for all the possibilities (it's why research is done in the first place, rather than relying on the perceptions of the 'obvious'). I'm not saying that I disagree with you or the original article, but instead of focusing on 'obvious' findings, there might be more value in looking at the possibilities that the findings present.

Why do you think there is a media bias?
Why is that bias more pronounced in print-media?
... and other such questions.

While there may be temptation to 'vent' on certain media outlets, and lines of political thought - the greatest value will be obtained from approaching the topic with an open mind.
Cos, let's face it, a media with a major skew does no one any good in the long-term.