How IS the reporting in the conservative press?

October 13th, 2008 at 02:03pm Linda Grist Cunningham

One of our Register Star readers posed this question in a recent e-mail: Why aren’t you covering the results of the presidential campaign polls done by the conservative media like Fox News?

The question is fascinating on two fronts: First, there was in the e-mail an assumption that the polls done by “conservative” media (Fox) would somehow have different results than polls done by  “liberal” media (supposedly the Associated Press and CNN). And, second, there was an underlying position that the actual reporting would then be different.

Horse race polls are pretty standard fare. Ask someone who will win. Ask for whom they will vote. While one can slant survey questions to get desired results,  there’s not much one can do when asking the question “are you voting for McCain or Obama”?

For instance, I pulled this from the Fox News Website just after lunch today: “New Marist Poll out today showing that Obama has a narrow lead in Ohio and is pulling away in PA with 9 percentage points among registered voters.” There’s not much one can do with the numbers, though one could write: McCain barely behind Obama in Ohio and is within nine percentage points in Pennsylvania.

There would be opportunities for a writer to take quotes, events and interviews and “spin” them to the tune of a political slant. So, I went looking this morning for how Fox News and The Washington Times are phrasing today’s campaign news.  Did the same for Associated Press, which is the primary supplier of national campaign content for the mainstream media (including the Washington Times), and for CNN, which conservatives say is the liberal media’s voice, just as Fox is supposedly the conservative media’s voice.

You can do the same comparisons just by clicking on Foxnews.com  and CNN.com

I took this straight off Fox News: “McCain appealed to voters about his electability during campaign stops Monday. A mix of polls out at the start of the week showed him down from Obama by anywhere from 4 to 11 points.

” ‘Let me give you the state of the race today, and some straight talk. We have 22 days to go. We’re 6 points down,” McCain said Monday. “The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and … concede defeat in Iraq.

” ‘But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them,” he said. The Obama campaign was quick to respond to McCain’s speech.

” ‘Less than twelve hours after his campaign announced that Senator McCain would finally have some new ideas on the economy, he decided that it was more important to give a new political speech about where he is in the polls,’ said Obama Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, who noted that Obama is talking Monday “about his new plan to provide immediate relief to struggling families and homeowners, jump start job creation in America and ease the credit crisis that’s hurting too many businesses.”

“In fact, Obama has proposed tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 and has called for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.”

That was Fox News, folks. There’s plenty more where that came from. And, it all proves a simple point: When journalists – mainstream or otherwise — do their reporting and writing, there’s hardly a dime’s difference in how they approach the story. They stick with the facts, quote accurately and in context, and pretty much provide accurate, full, contextual coverage.

Reporters for the Washington Times (so-called right) and the Washington Post (so-called left) covering the same event and the same polls report the same ways.  That’s what they are trained and expected to do.

So, where’s all the famed conservative and liberal stuff coming from? Check the blogs and editorials and commentaries. Which is exactly what they are supposed to do.

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