Media bias: can they still deny it?
The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, after George W. Bush's election, began publishing the "Homelessness Rediscovery Watch." Why? When Republicans assume power, the media seems to suddenly rediscover homelessness. But the Media Research Center tracked interest in homelessness during the latter part of the Clinton administration. The MRC says, "Homelessness -- one of the media's favorite tools to portray the alleged downside of Ronald Reagan's '80s prosperity -- was a more serious national problem during Bill Clinton's 1990s. ... Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless admitted ... 'Definitely, we saw more homelessness in the 1990s than we did in the 1980s.' But we saw far less homelessness on TV sets during the Clinton years.
"During the first Bush administration," according to the Media Research Center, "morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN ran an average of 53 stories on homelessness annually, compared to less than 17 per year during the Clinton administration. ... The expanding homeless population was out of sight during the Clinton years but just three short weeks after George W. Bush assumed office, ABC won the race to be the first network to rediscover the homeless. On Sunday, Feb. 11, 2001, "World News Tonight Sunday" anchor Carole Simpson intoned: 'Homelessness, which is estimated to affect from two and a half to three and a half million people, is again on the rise.'"
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