Posted on 11/08/2008 10:55:33 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
My assistant, Jean Hwang, and I have been examining Post coverage since Nov. 11 last year on issues, voters, fundraising, the candidates' backgrounds and horse-race stories on tactics, strategy and consultants. We also have looked at photos and Page 1 stories since Obama captured the nomination June 4. Numbers don't tell you everything, but they give you a sense of The Post's priorities.
The count was lopsided, with 1,295 horse-race stories and 594 issues stories. The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views. There were no broad stories on energy or science policy, and there were few on religion issues.
Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, "There are a lot of things I wish we'd been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don't at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It’s reached the point of pure dementia. They KNOW what they are but contrive to examine it as if they’ve never met themselves. It’s, ah, um, demented.
Yup.
It’s like saying the Pope is Catholic.
Good news is, their profits, circulation, market cap and everything that counts is going down rapildly.
Good news for America.
Confession is good for the soul... especially when you don’t have to pay for your crimes.
In other words, the damage is done, and there is precious little we can do about it now.
Yeah, we were biased, and everyone KNEW, and now we admit it. SO WHAT...
What’s the point in admitting it now, 4 days after it’s moot? If it’s an attempt to regain credibility by being ‘honest’ about the bias...it’s too little, and way too late. DIE, dinosaur media, DIE.
But we're not impressed.
I hope the WaPo's numbers comntinue to tank and I hope The One's policies send them down the sewer pipes forever.
So will the REAL truth ever come out?
Interesting way of saying they were totally bias toward Obama. What will be interesting is when the Obamanation starts clamping down on what they print. That’s when the real self-examination will begin.
But, by then, it will be too late...actually, it already is.
Saying after it no longer matters what everybody already knew...man, is that Washington Post one impressive news organization or what?
“When the Nazis came for the socialists,
I remained silent;
I was not a socialist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Catholics,
I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.”
Pastor Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller
That wasn’t much of a confession.
Their coverage was equivalent to Pravda covering a May Day Rally in Moscow (Obama) versus a learned analysis of the moral failings of “imperialist running dogs” (McCain).
They have re-earned their nickname: “Pravda on the Potomac”.
Obama said that if FoxNews did not exist, he would be five points higher in the polls. If the MSM were not in the tank for Obama, McCain would have been ahead by 15 to 20 points.
We have the Tennessean in my state, I call it “Pravda on the Cumberland.”
...yeah we know.
I love that you MSM types think we’re so stupid.
There’s been a bias for decades. This year was the first time the media extended it into ALL-OUT ADVOCACY.
It can’t be stated enough...
Journalism died in 2008.
Same thing as a retraction on P. D-34. Worthless.
I read this story this morning and got so mad I ended up yelling at my computer screen! Did you all GET what Bill Hamilton said? “... a narrative that unfolded until the very end.” A NARRATIVE. This POS is ADMITTING that the attitude the WaPo took toward the campaign was presenting it as a *story*, in the sense that it had to “make sense,” have a beginning, an end, a moral ... in other words, as FICTION. He and his b*st*rd ilk presented their readers with a FICTIONALIZED HERO, the Great Obama! They presented him as Superman (a person who does not actually EXIST, if I remember correctly), and the half-educated electorate bought it! The newspapers that are supposed to present us with FACTS so that we can make up our own minds instead presented us with a &$#@*!! NOVEL!
Aargh. Apologies for the caps and the exclamation points. I am still spitting bile over this. These geniuses don’t even realize what they’ve done. The MSM has committed suicide, and they tried to take us with them.
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