US General Election: McCain vs. Obama

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The important part, Martaug, is what you count as positive news. How you select your categories can speak volumes about what the results would be, and interpreting tone can be, to put it mildly, subjective. I tried to find just what PEJ considers as positive and negative, and, well, I'm still looking. However, there is one important question - how much of the positive coverage of Obama and the negative for McCain is due to media bias? Because if Obama has been leading and the news piece reports that, or seeks to explain why, this may count as positive for Obama - but it is because he is leading in the polls, thus doing a better job than his opponent. The PEJ itself admits that its findings need not say anything about the media's actual preferences, as quoted from here:

The data do not provide conclusive answers. They do offer a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions. Obama’s coverage was negative in tone when he was dropping in the polls, and became positive when he began to rise, and it was just so for McCain as well.

Not to say the media are all completely unbiased - I personally think some shows are biased towards Obama, and some are most likely biased towards McCain. But if the media says McCain is losing and has problems needn't mean it doing it for Obama.

 

Martaug, that same "liberal media" gave more positive coverage to Bush and more negative coverage to Gore back in 2000. Why on earth would you expect an un-biased media to give the same ratio of positive and negative coverage to two different candidates? The only way this would happen in practice is if both candidates had an identical number of positives and negatives which, in the real world, never happens.

 

Oh i expect it to be off a little but just look at msnbc's numbers 73% VS 14%. Thats gotta look fishy even to you

Shaman the methodology is here http://www.journalism.org/node/13441
Reading it leaves you thinking, "holy crap just how many people do they researching this!!"

 

No, it doesn't. McCain is losing, he has a very unpopular standpoint on the war in Iraq, he's run a disorganized campaign, his party's policies have gotten us into the mess we're in, he's made an about face on numerous issues since running for the Republican nomination. Reporting on these things truthfully means that his numbers are going to be incredibly low.

 

I just saw something thoroughly disgusting on the news here. Part of a documentary about the American election ad they were in a classroom in North Carolina. A schoolteacher was campaigning in the classroom to young children, mocking and attacking the children who said they supported McCain. Is that normal behaviour for American teachers? I as a teacher myself actually cursed at the TV and the horrible woman on there. I might agree with what she said but you do not do that to your pupils, you do not ask young maybe ten year old children which candidate they support and then deride and scare the children who do not agree with you. It is extremely unproffesional and unethical, it may be impossible to completely hide ones own bias but you damn well do your best. Now, I do not lay this on the Obama campaign as they had nothing to do with this but are things like this common in the US? Saw earlier a police in uniform make a speech on a McCain rally. Is the differentiation between peoples professional roles and their personal opinions so vague in the states or what is going on? When you step into the classroom you must at least be aware of your own biases and try to present the issues as neutrally as possible to the pupils and when you put on your policeuniform you are a representative of the law and state who speak with the power of the law and the state, you cannot then go out and advocate for one candidate or another, do that on your own time without the uniform.

 

No. This is extremely rare, and should always be dealt with swiftly. This is wildly inappropriate for a teacher to do that, is against the policy of most schools and I hope she loses her job.

 

Actually DR, it's not that uncommon : http://blog.mlive.com/schoolzone/2008/10/teachers_and_election_campaign.html

The Virginia Education Association sponsored an "Obama Blue Day" on Tuesday, asking teachers to wear blue in support of Barack Obama, much to the outrage of Virginia Republicans

The union for New York City teachers also has been criticized for distributing thousands of Obama buttons to members. There, schools Chancellor Joel Klein said he was enforcing a U.S. Department of Education policy that bans teachers from wearing campaign buttons at school.

The New York Post also reports that employees at the University of Illinois received an e-mail forbidding them to wear partisan political buttons on campus, while teachers at a high school near Santa Cruz, Calif., agreed to remove their "Educators for Obama" buttons in class after complaints from a parent who supports John McCain

http://www.dakotapolitics.com/blogPost.asp?PostId=12122

They’re protesting policies requiring them to be “politically neutral” at school.

NEW YORK - The teachers’ union for the nation’s largest public school system accused the city on Friday of banning political campaign buttons and sued to reverse the policy, declaring that free speech rights were violated.

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten announced at a news conference that a lawsuit had been filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to challenge the enforcement of the policy.

“We couldn’t believe it,” said Weingarten, who wore a Barack Obama lapel button. The American Federation of Teachers, including its UFT delegates, voted over the summer to endorse Obama’s presidential candidacy.

A ban on campaigning or expressions of political support for a candidate or political party or even an issue seems appropriate to me. Public schools are, after all, public. Parents don’t send their children to school to be indoctrinated politically, though that’s clearly what a lot of these teachers want. They send their children to school to learn things like mathematics, science, reading and writing.

 

Actually, no - it is uncommon. Out of the thousands of school districts we have in the United States, here we have three examples of overly-political teachers, and only a handful of these stories pop up just about every election year. I'm sure if we dug around we could find a few more, but not many. Like other professions, most teachers realize it is inappropriate to even discuss politics or religion with their students, let alone strongly advocate for a specific candidate or party so overtly.

So while not unheard of, the incidence of this happening are still quite rare.

 

DR, I've had mixed experiences myself. It's probably safe to say that not all objectionable events are actually objected to and make the news. It's also probably safe to say that it is far from truely commonplace. I'm thinking probably somewhere 5-25% of teachers act thusly to some degree or another.

It is completely inappropriate, though, because at this point the teacher ceases to teach and begins to indoctrinate.

 

If 5% of teachers behaved in such a manner, every school in the country would be making the paper. We wouldn't have 3 examples, but tens of thousands. The number of teachers who do this -especially at the elementary or middle school level - is much, much lower than 5 percent.

 

I agree. Even if it was 5% of all schools who had a single teacher who acted this way we would have far more than the handful of examples presented here.

Actually, the ban extends far beyond school teachers. I work on a military base, and the law bans any public employee from capaigning or showing public support for a candidate. So even though I work on a military base, and most people I work with a McCain supporters, no one is allowed to wear a lapel pin, nor are their any election signs anywhere on the base.

 

I think it is very common for teachers to let their political beliefs known (through comments, not open campaigning), but it is very rare for a teacher to berate their students for having opposing beliefs.

Actively campaigning does occur in school districts -- it happen here in Illinois all the time. Unless there is a law in place banning campaigning, it happens. There have even been flyers handed out to students in school districts here in the Chicago suburbs indicating which candidates and referendums the district and/or teacher's union supported and why. But that's Chicago....

 

Hold on to your seats as the next two days should be exciting. I am getting absolutely pummelled with anti-Obama e-mails and links. Far to many to actually post here.

The big two issues that I believe will cause him the most grief between now and the end of tomorrow are

1. His illegal alien aunt who has been living in public housing in Boston in violation of a deportation order. In addition it has been shown that she has been making (or someone has been making in her name) campaign contributions. I believe you have to be a US citizen to make contributions, but as we know the Obama campaign has basically turned off all safeguards on credit card donations.

2. The audio tape of the interview he gave to a San Francisco newspaper in which he basically said he was going to make running a coal plant so expensive they would go bankrupt. He also said that the cost of electricity will have to go up as the companies pass the cost of "change" onto the consumer.

However, my single biggest concern will be the chaos of tomorrow. I spoke to my sister over the weekend. She lives in Florida and is an Obama supporter. She spent 3.5 hours in line to vote on Saturday as Florida is one of the states that has early voting. If Florida can't handle the numbers of people who may want to vote on Tuesday we will be looking at a disaster.

 

The second point is a positive surely? That sounds like something that would make me vote for someone instead of something to drive me away.

 

Not everyone's top priority when voting is the environment. In addition, some of the key state's he is campaigning in are some of the top coal producing and using states.

 

I would imagine that the same could be said of anti-McCain emails and links being received by Obama supporters. And as long as said emails/links don't get widespread coverage, they probably won't have much of impact.

 

1. Obama has already addressed this issue, basically saying that we are a nation of laws, she's breaking the law, and family or not, she'll have to face the same consequences for illegal aliency as anyone else. I can't imagine many conservatives having a problem with that, and even if the middle or the left does, it's far too late to make an impact. The election is tomorrow.

2. You are pushing a silly smear, which at this point shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone here. Or at least, the right-wing blogs whose email lists you subscribe to that you got this story from – without even attempting to listen to this dubious audio tape yourself and use a little perspective and common sense before posting and forwarding it like mad – are pushing this silly smear. The audio tape in question was never hidden by anyone, has been available on the paper's web site since January, and basically reveals that John McCain and Barack Obama have precisely the same position on clean coal technology: that plants that don't adopt cleaner technology and emission standards will find it is too expensive for them to do business since they'll have to pay to pollute (a responsible measure that should have been put in place decades ago). OMG, the election is over. What a coincidence that this comes out now when McCain is betting the farm on the coal states of Ohio and Pennsylvania...

As for chaos - I'm worried about that too. You'd think the Florida Election Commission would have gotten its sh*t together since 2000, but alas.

 

In other news, Sen. Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died. May she rest in peace.

 

On teacher bias, the line between voicing one's opinion and open support is a wide and murky one, which is why I said that most of the incidents aren't reported or make the news. It's one thing to berate a student for supporting someone, but it's a little more iffy if you praise and endorse the policies one supports without mentioning the other.

On the coal-point, Obama has made a bit of an issue out of his support for clean-coal, especially in coal states like Virginia (here), so this comes out as a bit of a slap in the face to him, from himself in the past. I agree that this was never hidden, so no coverup here, but it is something that wasn't widely publicised and does more-or-less directly contradict his current position. Of course, as noted, McCain has a similar position, but no one was talking about 'bankrupting' them until now.

Another one, has anyone heard about Obama calling for the formation of a civilian national security force as well trained and funded as the military one?

 

NOG, Obama wasn't talking about clean coal when he was talking about those drastic tax increases, so he most assuredly is not traveling through time to slap himself in the face. Companies utilizing clean-coal technology would be unaffected.

We already have one. It's called the CIA.