Posted on 11/4/2004, 2:07:50 AM by Joe Taranto
Kerry got the “best press ever” during the 2004 campaign, according to a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). The senator received the most favorable news coverage of all presidential candidates in the last 25 years.
Bush was covered very negatively this year, according to the study, but he did not match the amount of bad press faced by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Kerry received a total of 58 percent positive evaluations from the media, in the time from Labor Day to Election Day. Not surprisingly, Bush did much worse at 36 percent positive and 64 percent negative news coverage.
In the month of October, as polls began to shift in favor of Bush, and the campaign came down to the wire, Kerry received a record 77 percent positive evaluations to Bush’s 34 percent.
Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias and Arrogance, echoed the same sentiment tonight, in an interview with John Gibson, in which he concurred that the media was heavily slanted towards Kerry in this election.
And so the question is raised: With the media overwhelmingly on his side, why didn’t Kerry win?
The media has never had as great an affect on society as it does now. Several news networks run 24 hours a day, and of course their corresponding websites help spread their messages even further.
There has never been an easier time for the elite media to push its agenda, and in this campaign they certainly did. But evidently, no matter how many forged documents they report, no matter how negatively they cover the war in Iraq, and no matter how much exposure they give to people like Michael Moore, they cannot directly change the outcome of the election.
And they weren’t able to in the 1984 election either, when Ronald Reagan got the worst media coverage in recent history. He received 91 percent negative press, according to the CMPA study, and went on to win the election in a landslide.
And so, a lot has changed in the media in 20 years. The surge in popularity of the New Media gave conservatives an outlet for their information, and the Old Media has suffered as a result of the fact-checkers, bloggers, and, of course, the conservative counterparts to their news websites and television networks.
However, one thing that has not changed from 1984 to 2004 is that the powerful voice of the liberal media is still unable to overcome the collective voice of the entire American public.
You'd think that F'n won the presidency, considering how much the MSM is showing of his concession speech.
Nice work!
Bush battled the MSM, Pop Culture, rock stars, movie stars, hostile debate hosts, the UN, propagandists, many effed up world governments AND Kerry. And STILL won. Wow.
But we need to win bigger next time. It was still too close. NOBODY should have wanted to vote for Kerry.
The American people held steadfast under this barrage.
Any people who can do this can do anything.
It was disgraceful. Let's hope there's a remedy in capitalism rather than law.
I remember this harsh treatment. Which is why I was stunned at all the accolades from liberals at Reagan's funeral. I'll bet it will be the same when Bush is gone. After they can look back with perspective, they will be able to see what he really has done.
"You can't beat something with nothing, and Kerry is about as spectacular a nothing as you could devise.."
Mark Steyn
If you think they were obsequious with Kerry, wait until Hillary starts her run!
It makes me wonder how much bigger the margin would have been if the media coverage was 'fair and balanced'.
btt
IMO the worst problem with the medias coverage of this campaign was their complete refusal to make Kerry answer any of the multitude of legitimate questions surrounding his military service and his anti-American activities in the early 1970's.
I don't mind the media being critical so much as I do them conspiring with a candidate to hide the truth from the American people. And the media had to be in on the fix or someone somewhere would have slipped up and asked the wrong question, and Kerry would have been put on the spot in public.
How about he turned his back on his fellow soldiers, then called them baby killers the likes of not seen since "Genghis Khan".
Then spent 20 years as US Senator doing nothing for your country.
Then when accepting your party's nomination for POTUS having the moronic audacity to state "Reporting for Duty".
Also having your lame duck "Trial Lawyer" appointment for VPOTUS saying that his band of brothers are with him or something to that effect.
Thanks again Swifties!
This is good but misses the huge issues:
1. Sweeping under the rug of Swift Vets charges.
2. Claiming Switees' charges have been "discredited"
3. Backtracks and recants by Kerry due to #1.
4. Failure to pursue Kerry records (Form 180)
5. Total integrity collapse by CBS in RatherGate
6. Total integrity collapse by ABC in VietCongGate 2004.
(add as you see fit)
BTW - has CBS finally called the election for Bush, or is Rather still holding out on some mathematical impossibility - perhaps resorting to the use of complex numbers, and mapping the electoral votes to the frequency domain? What's the frequency Kenneth?
Up against the odds like we were there is no human way, IMHO, that we could have won this. All praise and glory to God.
"I was stunned at "
??
Did you mean stuned?
Rarely am I stuned. However, I was pretty stuned at this year's election victories.
I agree. Farenheit 9/11 strengthened people's hatred for Bush, and I think it was one of the top reasons why the anti-Bush vote became so powerful.
I also think that Rock the Vote's sending out of the draft e-mail had a big affect on young voters. Rock the Vote's obviously not as "non-partisan" as it describes itself, because clearly a draft reinstatement would be blamed on Bush, and would turn the vote of an 18 year old man into a Kerry vote.
Now, admittedly, the Swift Vets did do a number on Kerry, but the point is, had the Democrats had a stronger candidate, we might have had a problem yesterday.
Farenheit 9/11, the draft rumor, and the barage of other odds against Bush seemed tough to beat, until the Democrats chose their candidate, who even in the midst of an "unpopular war" and a firing squad of character assassinations against Bush, just couldn't cut it.
On a related note, were there ANY news pieces on the Breck Girl's 'channeling' junk science lawsuits that put doctors and hospitals out of business?
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