It's less than a week from Super Tuesday and the numbers are in: 29 percent for Hillary Clinton, 27.8 percent for Barack Obama and 6.1 percent for John Edwards.
That's not the election results, but the breakdown of campaign stories about the leading Democratic candidates for president. Trouble is, some observers say, the amount of news coverage affects the amount of votes each campaign gathers.
Whoa. No wonder Edwards dropped out of the race. The media didn't play any attention to him - just because he wasn't bickering with the former First Lady. Sad day in the media, don't you think?
Shouldn't he have received the same amount of coverage as the other two Democratic leaders? Objective, fair and balanced news and reporting huh? Right. Try again.
Andrew Rojecki, professor of political communications at the University of Illinois Chicago, is worried about the American public's ability to make an informed decision "because the media has given minimal coverage of the candidates' stances on political issues." Right-o. And Dewey would agree. "Bottom-up" he'd say.
Finally, the article quotes some disturbing statistics:
According to “The Invisible Primary,” a report published by The Project for Excellence in Journalism in October 2007 that looked at media coverage during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign, while only 15 percent focused on the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals.
To make an informed decision, I don't need to know how many racial attacks Clinton's advisors have accidently released or how many Kennedy endorsements Obama's gotten. Give me their policies and their stances - show me how they can lead. Let me have my own opinion.
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