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Fair and Balanced? Maybe Democrats should rethink the “Fairness Doctrine”

Posted August 18, 2008

Liberals are lobbying for a revival of the “Fairness Doctrine” — mainly to force talk radio stations to “balance” Rush Limbaugh with Michael Moore: After all, the failure of liberal radio stations to create a market for themselves calls for government intervention. But given the liberal bias of mainstream media, maybe Democrats might be getting more than they’re clamoring for if a Fairness Doctrine were reinstated…

by Deborah Howell, Washington Post

Baltimore — (TFN): Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party’s presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain — and therefore there’s more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good.

In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates’ agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan. (…)

This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.

Continue this revealing article here…

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Posted by TFN-Politics · Filed Under Politics 

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