http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertai...,7266571.story
In writing about the Pew study released today, I was struck by the big story of how negative coverage on several levels of presidential politics had become.
I think this is big trouble for democracy, especially the hostile level of discourse in social media. And that it's something the media need to address collectively after the election.
But here's one of several fascinating smaller findings of the study that are kind of stunning -- even if they seem obvious and ho-hum to some of my more jaded, postmodern, aren't-we-cleverly-ironic colleagues:
ON MSNBC, the ratio of negative to positive stories on GOP candidate Mitt Romney was 71 to 3.
That's not a news channel. That's a propaganda machine, and owner Comcast should probably change Phil Griffin's title from president to high minister of information, or something equally befitting the work of a party propaganist hack in a totalitarian regime. You wonder how mainstream news organizations allow their reporters and corrdespondents to appear in such a cauldron of bias.
Hope you're proud of yourself MSNBC.
Not that this is really news to anyone who pays attention.
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http://www.journalism.org/analysis_r..._campaign_2012
The study also reveals the degree to which the two cable channels that have built themselves around ideological programming, MSNBC and Fox, stand out from other mainstream media outlets. And MSNBC stands out the most. On that channel, 71% of the segments studied about Romney were negative in nature, compared with just 3% that were positive-a ratio of roughly 23-to-1. On Fox, 46% of the segments about Obama were negative, compared with 6% that were positive-a ratio of about 8-to-1 negative. These made them unusual among channels or outlets that identified themselves as news organizations.