🚀 go-pugleaf

Scott wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 10:31:18 -0600, green lantern <no@evil.escapes>
> wrote:
> 
>> WDS wrote:
>>> On Oct 7, 11:56 pm, charleneco...@excite.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> If OBAMA gets elected.. the Stock Market will crash
>>> Given the current market I guess Obama has already been elected then?
>> The partisan pro-Bama media would have you believe as much...
> 
> 
> Only because it is looking more likely 

No, only because THEY elevated him into contention, learn something, fool:

http://www.mrc.org/SpecialReports/2008/obama/obama.asp

Obama�s Margin of Victory: The Media
How Barack Obama Could Not Have Won the Democratic Nomination Without 
ABC, CBS and NBC

By Rich Noyes
MRC Research Director


On August 28, when the junior Senator from Illinois accepts his party�s 
nomination to be the next President of the United States, Barack Obama 
may wish to spend a few moments thanking network news reporters for 
making the whole night possible. Since the launch of Obama�s national 
political career at the Democratic convention four years ago, the Big 
Three broadcast networks have showered Obama with positive � even 
glowing � news coverage, protected the candidate from the attacks of his 
rivals, and shown little interest in investigating Obama�s past 
associations or exploring the controversies that could have threatened 
his campaign.
These are the key findings of an exhaustive analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC 
evening news coverage of Barack Obama � every story, every soundbite, 
every mention � through the end of the Democratic primaries in June. 
Media Research Center analysts examined every reference to Obama on the 
three evening broadcasts, and found a near-absence of the journalistic 
scrutiny and skepticism normally associated with coverage of national 
politicians. Indeed, much of the coverage � particularly prior to the 
formal start of Obama�s presidential campaign in early 2007 � bordered 
on giddy celebration of a rising political "rock star" rather than 
objective newsgathering.

That the national media have unfairly tipped the scales in Obama�s 
direction is a fact not lost on the public. The Pew Research Center 
surveyed about 1,000 adults in late May, and reported that "far more 
Americans believe that the press coverage has favored Barack Obama than 
think it has favored Hillary Clinton," with even 35 percent of Democrats 
seeing "a pro-Obama bias." A Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely voters 
released July 21 discovered "49 percent of voters believe that in the 
general election, most reporters will try to help Obama with their 
coverage" while "just one voter in four (24%) believes that most 
reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage."

And a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters released 
July 24 discovered six times as many think "most members of the media" 
want Obama to win rather than McCain. According to an article posted on 
FoxNews.com, "Only about 1 in 10 (11 percent) volunteers the belief that 
the media is neutral on the race to become the 44th President of the 
United States....When asked to rate the objectivity of media coverage of 
the campaigns, Americans feel Obama gets more of a positive spin by a 
better than 7-to-1 margin (46 percent more positive toward Obama; 6 
percent more positive toward McCain)."

The public believes the media are tilted towards Obama because of the 
biased performance they witnessed during this year�s primaries. NBC News 
correspondent Lee Cowan, the reporter assigned to cover the Obama 
campaign full time during the primaries, admitted in an interview in 
early January that he felt pulled in Obama�s direction: "From a 
reporter�s point of view, it�s almost hard to remain objective because 
it�s infectious, the energy, I think. It sort of goes against your core 
to say that as a reporter, but the crowds have gotten so much bigger, 
his energy has gotten stronger. He feeds off that."

Weeks later, Cowan told the New York Times� Jacques Steinberg that it 
was "hard not to drink the Kool-Aid" surrounding Obama: "Even in the 
conversations we have as colleagues, there is a sense of trying 
especially hard not to drink the Kool-Aid. It�s so rapturous, everything 
around him. All these huge rallies."

On CNN�s Reliable Sources on January 13, Washington Post media writer 
Howard Kurtz asked a former Washington Post editor, The Politico�s John 
Harris, whether he thought "journalists are rooting for the Obama 
story." Harris referred back to his time at the Post: "A couple years 
ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they 
needed to go through detox when they came back � �Oh, he�s so 
impressive, he�s so charismatic,� and we�re kind of like, �Down, boy.�" 
Anchoring news coverage of Democratic primaries on February 12, MSNBC�s 
Chris Matthews famously confessed after listening to an Obama victory 
speech, "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don�t have that 
too often."

To assess the degree to which journalists� infatuation with Obama 
contaminated daily news coverage, MRC analysts used our own News 
Tracking System (NTS) software and Nexis to locate every story 
mentioning Obama on ABC�s World News, the CBS Evening News and NBC 
Nightly News from the time Obama emerged on the national stage (the 
first evening news story mentioning Obama aired on May 17, 2000) through 
June 6, 2008, the last broadcast before Hillary Clinton formally exited 
the Democratic race, cementing Obama�s nomination.

The three evening news broadcasts may not be able to tout the high 
ratings of a generation ago, but together averaged more than 23 million 
combined viewers from January through early June of this year, far more 
than their cable news competitors. And unlike the news junkies who flock 
to the 24/7 cable outlets, the typical broadcast evening news viewer 
spends less of their day devouring campaign news, which makes them 
consequently more likely to be influenced by the information and images 
they receive from these programs.

Analysts found a total of 1,365 news stories and interviews offering at 
least some discussion of Obama. About two-fifths of these (550) were 
full reports that focused exclusively, or nearly so, on Obama. Another 
170 items (about 12% of the total) were brief, anchor-read items that 
also focused on Obama. Just under half of the total (645, or 47%) were 
full reports or interviews that included either mentions of or 
soundbites from Obama, but did not focus on him. Examples of stories 
included in this group are: items about the congressional debate over 
Iraq in early 2007 which quoted Obama along with many other senators; 
stories about candidate debates where Obama was one talking head among 
many; or stories about any of his Democratic (or Republican) rivals 
which included some comments directed at Obama himself. These stories, 
about 30 percent of which conveyed a distinctly positive or negative 
spin about the candidate (more about how we determined a story�s spin 
shortly), were included in the sample to ensure a complete portrait of 
network news coverage of Obama.

NBC and ABC aired the most total stories (490 and 464 respectively), 
with the CBS Evening News a fairly distant third with 411 stories. As 
far as stories that focused mainly on Obama, ABC (194) and NBC (198) 
were practically tied, with CBS again lagging (158 stories). The NBC 
Nightly News aired the most stories with minor discussion of Obama 
(249), followed by ABC�s World News (222) and CBS (174). The remainder 
were brief items read by the news anchor; the CBS Evening News � which 
had a regular "Campaign Notebook" segment of short items � aired the 
most such stories (74), followed by ABC (48) and NBC (43).