Bush - Media Tried To Influence Election

Medienkritik takes a look at Germany's spin on how the media report on George Bush.

Here is what the report concluded:

The study found that in the critical period leading up to the 2004 election, television network news' reporting was overwhelmingly biased against President Bush:

"In the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the period dominated by the debates, President George W. Bush has suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry, according to a new study released today by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

More than half of all Bush stories studied were decidedly negative in tone (1). By contrast, only a quarter of all Kerry stories were clearly negative. (...)

Stories primarily about the President were more than three times as likely to be negative than were stories mostly about Kerry (52% Bush versus 17% Kerry).

Negative Bush stories also outweighed positive ones. Only 15% of Bush stories on TV cast him in a clearly positive light. The largest number, 33%, were neutral.

Kerry fared far better. Indeed, his coverage was more than twice as likely to be positive during this period as negative. Fully 57% of stories primarily about Kerry were positive and another 26% were neutral.

Most of the network TV stories were not solely about Bush or Kerry but discussed both candidates. While these stories tended to be more neutral than stories about primarily one candidate or the other, even here there was a pattern of Kerry coming out better. In all, 11% of these stories were clearly negative about Bush, versus 4% for Kerry. Likewise, 16% were positive about Kerry, versus just 7% about Bush."

And still Bush won.

All this helps explain why Trust in journalism has hit all-time low.

UPDATE

Commenter Dan points us to this BBC poll.

Voters 'don't trust politicians'

Yes and readers don't trust jounalists. Which explains the rise of the blogsphere.

What's worse is that the media lie about the lying.
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