Lingering concerns about accusations of bias in The Pilot’s presidential election coverage warrant post-election scrutiny. Two qualms drive my concerns — echoes of the vehement claims of favoritism leveled by partisans on both sides, and the results of a recent nationwide media study showing that in a six-week period before Election Day, Republican John McCain was almost twice as likely as Barack Obama to be the subject of negative coverage.
If that is the case, to what degree did The Pilot’s coverage reflect that pattern? How much did wire service material on which we, like most regional newspapers, rely heavily for coverage of national stories, mirror that blueprint? Was that pattern obvious to Pilot staffers handling the daily election stories? Beyond the content and its tone, did our own story placement, headlines and photo choices buttress the national trend?
The answers are full of nuance, but overall, there is scant evidence to support accusations of bias in The Pilot’s election coverage.
There were misjudgments, to be sure, chief among them the absence of a front-page announcement on the day of the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach and the failure to balance a lengthy profile of McCain that ran 10 days before the election with a similar in-depth profile of Obama.
On the national level, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism coded as positive, negative or neutral the tone of 857 campaign stories that ran in 43 print, online and broadcast news outlets between the end of the conventions and the final debate.
At first glance, the numbers are alarming: 57 percent of the stories about McCain were negative and only 14 percent positive. Those negatives for McCain, however, did not necessarily translate into positives for Obama, who scored 36 percent positives and 29 percent negatives. But these findings do not suggest the media functioned as Obama cheerleaders.
The obvious bias reflected in those numbers, insists Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of PEJ, “is the bias that favors winning.” Obama’s negatives were considerably higher during McCain’s post-convention bounce, when polls showed a likely Republican win. The fall of Lehman Brothers in mid-September and McCain’s dramatic but ineffectual response to it coincided with the decline of his positives, Jurkowitz said.
The study’s most lamentable finding showed that strategy, tactics and polling accounted for 53 percent of the coverage — information least useful to voters. Policy issues accounted for 20 percent, reinforcing the “winning engenders winning” phenomenon.
In that context, The Pilot’s 18-page Voter Guide, published 10 days before the election, stands out as an exemplary service to readers, an evenhanded and comprehensive presentation of both candidates and issues that stood in stark contrast to much of the national coverage.
Throughout the election season, because Pilot staffers generated only a small percentage of campaign stories, our four wire services provided most of the election news.
The exceptions: one reporter and one columnist attended the political conventions, and Pilot reporters covered the major candidates’ visits to the region when Virginia became a battleground state.
Tim Tierney, The Pilot’s wire editor, did sentry duty, policing dozens of election dispatches each day from The Associated Press, New York Times News Service, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service and McClatchy Tribune Information Service.
In the daily dose of less-than-objective “little things” — the vast majority of which applauded Obama or dissed McCain — Tierney found ample reason for vigilance. On occasion, he said, liberal bias seemed to play a role. As examples, he cited two New York Times stories: A profile of Cindy McCain and a story that insinuated John McCain had had an affair with a lobbyist. Neither ran in The Pilot. “Far more often,” Tierney said, “I felt it was just laziness ... a lack of vigilance.
“We did our best to offer each side an equal amount of space, and we were on guard for bias against the individual candidates,” he explained. “You had to be willing to pass up the latest and greatest New York Times exclusive” when stories just felt wrong.
A more tangible measure of whether bias tinged The Pilot’s coverage is a day-by-day assessment of story presentation. The more than 20 front pages with election stories showed scrupulous attention to balance. Viewing all those pages side by side leads to a single conclusion: Photo for photo, column inch for column inch and headline for headline — in both size and message — one is at pains to find a significant misstep that could be interpreted as a leg up for either candidate.
Tierney, along with PEJ’s Jurkowitz, believes the sheer excitement of Obama’s story is also a driving force behind the media’s pro-Obama impulses. Newness and novelty are every journalist’s weakness. In the end, Obama’s is an exciting story; he is history. Journalists long to write a little piece of it.
Joyce Hoffmann, the public editor, is an associate professor in the English Department at Old Dominion University. Reach her at (757) 446-2475 or public.editor@pilotonline.com.
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"The writers and editors
"The writers and editors are, however, college-educated and intelligent - unlike many of the posters here - and will naturally appear more liberal than blue collar conservatives who rely on a high school diploma and their browser skills for knowledge."
Hmm. Ain't that something? Must be a post from one of those "special" people with insight that us normal people lack.
Liberal, pro-Obama media? You must be kidding
The Pilot allowed rabid conservatives to post lies all over these message boards about Obama's religion, birth certificate and associations.
It printed every bit of negative news they could find, short of the outright absurd.
It has backed conservatives like Thelma Drake on its editorial pages and it supported Bush and his war until the public turned against both.
It has been a follower of public sentiment; not a leader.
The writers and editors are, however, college-educated and intelligent - unlike many of the posters here - and will naturally appear more liberal than blue collar conservatives who rely on a high school diploma and their browser skills for knowledge.
You got censored here? Given what the Pilot posts, it must have been worse than disgraceful.
Censored....
Censored again...I rest my case....
Of Course the Pilot was biased
This election was far to important to risk the people of Virginia chosing McCain.
This article is all about damage control. They have alienated a large portion of the community who feel their opinions are not given due respect. They have alienated a good percentage of the community, and this is one of several factors forcing the Pilot to release a rather alarming percentage of their reporters and staff, cut back the size of the paper, and drop many features. The 2009 model Virginia Pilot is going to be much more modest than it is today. Is less really more?
They threw themselves on the sword so to speak for the greater good, and having achieved their objective they are now trying to save the paper. I am am paid subscriber, and am not the type to cancel my paid subscription while upset with a story. I suspect neither are most others. However my subscription comes up for renewal soon...
I agree
That's she totally forgot what was said in February. Just trying to justify their status in the election that was lost due to the MSM and the press. I saw an article and on tv that now the press is saying they really don't know anything about BHO. Too late now. You get what you ask for.
thr first amendment guarantees the ability to speak
not necessarily to speak evenhandedly. Certainly news media is biased, if for no other reason than the people who run them are, well, people. Part of the problem is the lack of newspapers, as in different ones, in many regions.
NY used to have dozens of papers and at least 6 major ones. You could pull out your favorite and read whatever turned you on. Now, the selection is more modest, and in regions like ours, virtually non-existent. Some of that, if not all, is due to corporate buyouts and the reduction of the number of companies that own major paper, broadcast and cable TV and, of course, radio.
At least in the newspaper area, there are several major ones, WSJ for one, New York Post and Washington Times for others, that are certainly biased to the right. Radio has all bias to the right, big time. And, one of the major cable networks, FOX, boasts of being at or near the top in viewership. I would certainly venture to say that more people watch TV and listen to radio than read the paper. So the notion that conservatives are "picked on" is a bit of reach, to be sure.
You can't quantify bias
It's a subjective value. For the same reason, you can't quantify what's negative. It's all in the eye of the beholder. Yet describing information as negative is the key element to quantifying bias.
The right thinks anyone or anything that disagrees with them, or writes things that they disapprove of, is biased. Hence, "mainstream media" is biased because it won't stick to the right's version of "truth."
Fox, on the other hand, is "objective" because it panders to blue collar conservatives and reports what they want to hear.
The left blames the mainstream media for it's early support of Bush and the war, claiming newspapers fell asleep at the switch. They worry that newspapers have been neutered by the right's claims of bias and right-leaning corporate ownership. They think the newspaper is biased too, but for different reasons.
Can both sides be right? If so, does that make newspapers as "objective" as humanly possible?
Dogpen et al, Keep up the good work
"You may try to defend yourself, but I'll never buy that defence, because it's just not true. "
The Pilot gives post election analysis of their coverage and all you can say is "from my radical right-wing point of view you're still biased!" Only the Pilot falling all over McCain and calling him 'merica's greatest hero while simultaneously calling our President Elect (woot!) a dirty Muslim terrorist would have changed your tune. You, on the radical right, (the majority of participants on this board) have lied and thrown excrement and called names all through the election cycle with no thought to honesty or fair play. Now you claim to be able to judge bias? You've lost that ability along with your integrity. Continue on with what you're doing. Cry louder. Shout more obscenities. It reminds moral and rational people of the kind of destructive moronic goons that are among us. Keep talking. Show your stripes. It's the best thing y'all can do for the country short of leaving it. Love it or leave it; remember your mantra? Where's your follow through? Oh, its in the toilet with your integrity . . .
Its just a pen
pierreg18059 you stated
We have investigated ourselves and we have determined that we are innocent! A trial lawyers dream self serving investigation leads to denial of bias.
Isn't that what the police do...Nobodys complaining...They carry guns not pens...LOL
And another thing
If only you printed a nice picture of a smiling John McCain instead of one that showed his age. And instead of covering the outside convention "CIRCUS", you should have covered the nutty and jacked-up people calling a US Senator "an Arab!" and "terrorist!" and an "anti-mercan". (end of ode to DogPen)
Pulled from the front page
I would certainly hope that this was not pulled from the front page because of all the heat it has generated for Ms. Hoffman and the VP Editors.
You can try again to defend yourself "DEMOPILOT"
but I will not buy it. Your coverage was way over the top for BHO. Not inch by inch, but mile by mile. Even your photos used always showed a smiling, I'm loving life BHO & I'm a haggard old man McCain. There were way more positive articles for BHO than McCain. Even during the RNC there was more coverage of BHO/Biden than McCain. You even scoffed @ the Republican rally in Va. Beach. All you could do was say the "CIRCUS" was in town. The show outside the convention center was given more press than what was going on inside. Now I know that article was meant to be funny, but it was biased. You know it was & still is. You may try to defend yourself, but I'll never buy that defence, because it's just not true. This paper was biased even in the manner in which articles were placed. BHO @ the top of the pages & McCain @ the bottoms. You had to read about BHO several times before you even got to one McCain article. Again, your bias showed this through out the entire campaign, all the way until the end. Good job DEMOPILOT, "NOT"!!!!!
Investigation
We have investigated ourselves and we have determined that we are innocent! A trial lawyers dream self serving investigation leads to denial of bias. Only the VP staff believes this article.
Many pretensions by the Pilot
"Why is it that the Pilot, among many others, continue to try and give the impression that they are completely above the fray?" The Pilot pretends to be many things that it is not. I find tolerance for all sorts of inaccuracies in articles to be quite surprising. The Pilot pretends to care. I wondered, too, why Ms. Hoffman wrote that defensive "we are NOT BIASED!" editorial.
Face Facts
The right's idea of fair and balanced is out of whack. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter are their standard --little more needs to be said. As has been suggested below, election news coverage tends to favor apparent winners. Further, the media has become guilty of false balance in equating wildly asymmetric views in terms of plausibility, authority and rational content as roughly equal in the name of even handed coverage. Finally, the pilot's opinion pieces are just that, opinions. So, they are not the best data for determining bias. The article in question acknowledges some bias, but points to mitigating factors. This seems to be an honest and valid assessment. It is unfortunate that many of the responses below are filled with the typical dishonest bile disguised as pap that passes for right wing rational discourse. In the present climate no one outside of your inner circle is going to take that sort of foolishness seriously.
What is really funny is that
What is really funny is that the ex-editor of Port Folio posted a defense below. This is in fact a sister publication to this newspaper. This person parted ways with the paper for what was reported as having a position that was too far to the left. It seems he still has a lot of friends in editorial positions at the Pilot.
Pilot Unbiased?
No one thinks the media and/or the Virginia Pilot was fair and unbiased in the past election cycle. The list goes on and on. As it stands right now we know more about Joe the plumber than we do the president elect. Turns out Obama was friends with Bill Ayers and google that monster. We still have not seen his college grades although we were repeatly hit with McCain's grade standing. No discussion about Obama's drug used which he discussed in his book yet Cindy McCain's drug problems were pulled out and she wasn't running for office. No one has seen Obama's health records although the press talked about McCain like he was dying. The media, both print and TV failed the American people to the point that many no longer give them any credence. Now all we hear is denile from every aspect of your reporting. Hey, all we wanted were the facts and we did not get them. Sorry if we lump all of you together but that is how things go.
If this had to be presented
If this had to be presented in court I could show a clear subjective approach by the Virginian Pilot. Both in print and on the blogs. Having an employee of the paper who deals with the public perception of the paper offering a one sided defense is hardly acceptable. This was a concerted effort. This was not an accidental happening. Mrs. Hoffman herself played a hand in it. To accept her argument one would have to be dim witted.
Oh so typical
There is no doubt that VP was in the tank for The Obama campaign. Ms. Hoffman's analysis is typical of liberals. She is clouding the issue with facts about column inches devoted to each, and photos of each. It is easy to quantify these facts, but much harder to be honest and review the look and feel of the coverage. As an English professor, I would expect Ms. Hoffman to pay careful attention to words and nuance, something she carefully ignores in this piece. Perhaps a better measure of the VP's biased election coverage would be to poll the local population? My guess would be that subscriptions / renewals are down, but of course this is due to the economy (tongue in cheek). Readers were disgusted in the one sided cheerleading for the Democrat party. The VP will be unable to pacify this outrage by presenting token analysis.
Protest too much...
Sounds like you're trying to clear your conscience....forget it. Your biased coverage, weather coming from your constant use of NYT editorialists or your own liberal bias was apparent every day on the front page and, especially, on the OPINION page. nice try on the stats though. You were in the tank for "O" just like every other liberal news outlet and got bolder and bolder about it the closer the election. I can't believe you're now trying to make a case that "we were even handed, weren't we, guys, really, we did a good job, didn't we...really??"...no, no you didn't and your own statistics prove it. Shame on you and shame on all the liberal, biased, shameless press. It's bad enough that the racist African American community were in the tank for "O" but the press should have known better.