In Other News, The Earth Continued To Revolve Around the Sun

The Lord of Truth lets us know about the latest "news" -- something most of recognized while it was taking place...

U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.

The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

Only 20 percent were positive toward Bush compared to 30 percent of stories about Kerry that were positive, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

...Looking at public perceptions of the media, the report showed that more people thought the media was unfair to both Kerry and Bush than to the candidates four years earlier, but fewer people thought news organizations had too much influence on the outcome of the election.

"It may be that the expectations of the press have sunk enough that they will not sink much further. People are not dismayed by disappointments in the press. They expect them," the authors of the report said.

The study noted a huge rise in audiences for Internet news, particularly for bloggers whose readers jumped by 58 percent in six months to 32 million people.

Of course, journalists will deny that bias had anything to do with the reporting disparity. But the last paragraph demonstrates that the news organizations are being forced to compete with other information sources, which can only be a good thing. Glenn Reynolds may not be as famous today as Dan Rather. But he's got a better shot at being remembered as a pioneer (ala Edward R. Murrow) a generation or two from now.