I spoke to this in the comments of a recent post, but I believe that it is an assertion worthy of its own post. That being: Obama is not really getting more coverage than McCain.

Yes, I know, there was a study showing that he does, as there was a similar study showing that Obama’s coverage has been far more negative than McCain’s, despite McCain fumbling and gaffing far more often. But the missing piece comes from the recent Boston Globe story where they showed that the most-often-used word on John McCain’s site was “Obama.” Put all of those pieces together, and the whole picture clicks into place.

The media is likely giving quite equal amounts of coverage to Obama and McCain–but since McCain’s campaign is mostly about Obama, expressing him in the negative, the increased coverage of Obama–more of it negative than with McCain–is simply a result of McCain’s own focus. At least.

I still maintain that McCain is getting a better break because the media pays less attention to him. If the media ignored attacks completely and just focused on each candidate’s actions and policies, and gave each candidate equal time and fair coverage, then John McCain would likely be far lower in the polls than he currently is. When your campaign is a jumbled mess of attacks, policy reversals, senior moments, and gaffes, the media is doing you a huge favor by not paying much attention to you. This effect is amplified because McCain’s pre-standing image is one of a bipartisan maverick, an image that the media still perpetuates despite increasingly large collections of evidence that prove the contrary. Of course, the media goes even further with McCain, actively covering up his gaffes and other negatives in addition to simply ignoring them.

I would also like to touch on how the media covers races. As I mentioned, there would be a great deal better quality to our media coverage–and to the campaign in general–if the media simply outright ignored every negative statement made by one candidate about the other; better still to ignore such statements from pundits. Such partisan attacks are usually highly inaccurate, and the media is supposed to focus on accuracy. Let each candidate define themselves, and then have the media pick up a long-lost responsibility: independent fact-checking. In short, the media should focus on how each candidate proposes to run things, and then do an unbiased, fact-based assessment of these claims. While this may sound like a pipe dream, it is, the last I checked, what journalism is supposed to be about.

That would leave the questions of “equal coverage” and “fair coverage.” Equal coverage suggests that the media should spend exactly the same amount of time covering both candidates. So long as that coverage is truly accurate–and recent coverage has been tilted far more in McCain’s favor, far from accurately–then I am OK with the idea of equal time. If the media wants to have one hour of coverage on Obama giving a stirring speech to 200,000 people in Berlin, and spend another hour with McCain in the cheese section of a local supermarket followed by a press conference in front of the “Fudge Haus,” then fine. But barring that, coverage should be fairly measured in terms of what merits coverage. If McCain is incapable of doing anything worth reporting on, then he should not complain, unless he wants the media to cover him doing nothing interesting, or as is more often the case, doing things badly.

Then there is “fair coverage.” There has been a tendency in the media to try to give both sides equal representation, as if both sides had equal positives and negatives, just as many good ideas and bad ideas, and exactly the same merit and disgrace. This tendency has only really been prevalent since Bush took office and Republicans have been doing 99% of the bad stuff out there–you never saw the media trying to balance coverage of Clinton’s scandals with anything they found on the Republicans. This is mostly a running-scared knee-jerk response to false charges of a “liberal media.” And the idea is indeed flawed–both sides are not always going to be equal. Fair coverage does not mean that you try to give equal positive and negative coverage to each side, it means that you report on exactly what each side has been doing, focusing on them, and not on what they tell you to focus on. If Obama has been speaking to huge, cheering crowds and making clear sound policy decisions, and McCain has been making appearances before small groups and gaffing a lot, the media should not be covering up for McCain and attacking Obama so their coverage seems “fair.”

Similarly, when there is an issue up for discussion and one side is obviously wrong, it should not be given equal respect. Offshore drilling, for example, has been pretty conclusively proven to have almost no value in the context of our current energy issues–it would take many years before any oil production came from it, and that production would have an impact so minimal that daily price fluctuations could completely cancel it out. And yet, in political coverage in the media, the idea is treated with respect as if it weren’t proven to be nothing but an empty pander. Simply because one side says an idea has value doesn’t mean that it does, or that you should accept the claim, or let it pass without pointing out its obvious lack of worth.