Posted on 03/13/2005 11:45:50 AM PST by bamaborn
NEW YORK (AP) - A study of news coverage of the war in Iraq fails to support a conclusion that events were portrayed either negatively or positively most of the time.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at nearly 2,200 stories on television, newspapers and Web sites and found that most of them couldn't be categorized either way.
Twenty-five percent of the stories were negative and 20 percent were positive, according to the study, released Sunday by the Washington-based think tank.
Despite the exhaustive look, the study likely won't change the minds of war supporters who considered the media hostile to the Bush administration, or opponents who think reporters weren't questioning enough, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
"There was enough of both to annoy both camps," he said. "But the majority of stories were just news."
Rosenstiel said most people understand the complexities of what is going on in Iraq, how continued suicide bombings can happen at the same time as a successful election.
The three network evening newscasts tended to be more negative than positive, while the opposite was true of morning shows, the study said. Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, unlike the more evenhanded CNN and MSNBC, the study said.
A more limited look at campaign coverage found that 36 percent of stories on President Bush were negative, compared to 12 percent for Democrat John Kerry. Stories were positive 20 percent of the time for Bush, 30 percent for Kerry, said the project, which examined some 250 stories for tone.
"I don't know whether this was because he was the incumbent or because a lot of the coverage of the campaign was filtered through events in Iraq," Rosenstiel said. "It's probably a little of both."
The project's annual study of the state of journalism found that the idea of categorizing people as getting their news primarily from television or newspapers is becoming outdated. A Pew Research Center poll of 3,000 people last spring found that more than one-third of news consumers regularly check out at least four different kinds of news outlets, among the Web, newspapers, magazines, radio and local, national or cable TV.
Americans are now "news grazers," the study said.
Throw in Web logs, and "everyone is getting this sort of Mixmaster blend of journalism," Rosenstiel said. "Traditional journalism is a smaller part of that mix than it used to be."
Yet the project found that much of the investment in the news business goes to packaging information instead of gathering it. More than half of people at Web news organizations surveyed by Pew said they had seen cutbacks in their newsrooms over the past three years.
The notion that Americans are headed toward a more partisan form of news consumption isn't borne out by research, Rosenstiel said. With the exception of Republican cable news viewers who prefer Fox, most media consumption mirrors the population in general.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is affiliated with the Columbia University School of Journalism. The study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Link to The Project for Excellence in Journalism:
http://www.journalism.org/default.asp
Yeah, right. Like I believe this report. I can see for myself if a report is biased or not. I don't need a survey to tell me that. The same people say the MSM aren't liberal either, but we all know that is a crock.
"The conservative movement has done a much better job in recent years of getting a wider part of its spectrum on the air," says Tom Rosenstiel, founding director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is an initiative by journalists to clarify and raise the standards of American journalism.
It's a fox,chicken coop sort of thing.
This is hi-larious. A bunch of liberals trying to objectively determine whether news srories are biased. "But Bush did lie about WMD, that's not bias, that's just the truth...." The sheer gall is astounding.
"But now that anybody with a Web site and fifty bucks can be a communicator, we don't know how to distinguish ourselves from our new, pseudo competitors. Instead, all too often we sadly try to imitate them." -- Tom Rosenstiel
They balanced one year of no coverage of WMDs against one year of Bush lied about WMDs and calls that fair.
Co-lumbia, P-Ewe, awh shucks, where is the POYNTER Institute?
'nuff said.
Let me guess: To provide cover for the liberal news media.
The negative stories where seen by a larger audience thanks to the "big three". The positive stories had to be searched-for.
you would know best......seems to me the actual war coverage seemed to be more or less balanced....it was the aftermath after the invasion and victory that the news turned decidedly negative.........
But, wait, if the coverage on Iraq was evenly balanced, how can he point to that coverage to justify such overwhelmingly negative coverage of the President by the MSM?
Most people can listen to or read a report and get a feeling for the tilt of the story. Some have subtle nuances that the reader or hearer is unaware of, but affect the percetion. But if the published/aired stories are even in regards to negative/positive, and many events of a positive nature were unreported, then the bias cannot be measured, tho' it can be very real. All I have heard from those who have been in Iraq indicate that the positive news is being ignored.
yeah.......CNN and MSNBC so reflect the American conscious that they are losing viewers at an alarming rate to FOX....
It is possible for the networks to present fact based news, and yet skew the truth? Our media is the living proof, and this research project has adopted the same tactics.
Endless stories about problems in Iraq were true, it's just that by not covering the positive aspects of what was taking place in Iraq, the American public was left with the impression that doom equaled Iraq.
The best evidence of this I can point to was the recently held elections in Iraq. Very few people in this nation thought those elections would come off smoothly, be they liberal or conservative. The media had so skewed reality in Iraq, that it was nearly thought impossible to hold elections.
The truth was, Iraq was a lot more stable than the media led the American public to believe.
Freedom of the press is an important concept. Censorship is unacceptable in a free society. We all agree that governmet censorship is bad, but few address corporate censorship. The corporate run MSM in this nation exercises a censorship that is every bit as destablizing to a free society as government censorship.
2005 MSM in America, has gone so far left that it has very little credibility with anyone posessing an IQ over room temperature. It is appauled that it doesn't have more clout with the American public. It's existance amidst incestuous islands of liberalism have prevented it from having the first clue why.
This Project for Excellence in Journalism study, is proof in part that they are VERY sympathetic to the MSM mindset. THis study, and their attempt to pass it of as reality based, is laughable. No, it's downright sad.
Clueless to the bitter end...
Well, at least he didn't add the "more even handed" dan blather.....hahahaha!
FMCDH(BITS)
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