Guest Blog Pundit Tyler Carpenter: Media Bias and the Democratic Nominating Process

    Recently, much of the focus from the Clinton camp centers on a not-so-subtle bias toward Obama in the "mainstream media".  The complaints have focused on the media's portrayal an Obama win as virtually inevitable, and the sense that all her campaign's messages are being cast in a light of desperation.  There have been hints that this bias is due to sexism in the mainstream media as more than one Clinton supporter has written "if Barack Obama were female, he wouldn't even be considered a serious candidate by the media".

    To a certain extent, the complaints of media bias are true.  The media DOES portray Obama's campaign as a smoothly running piece of fund-raising and vote-getting machinery, and the Clinton campaign as "out of sync" and "running on fumes".  But the reason for these messages has nothing to do with Clinton's gender.  The problem is that Sen. Clinton's campaign IS on life support at this time, that her campaign has not been the efficient machine it needs to be, and that her message of "experience and realism in a world of danger" is not a saleable message when stacked next to the uniquely American message of "hope and optimism in a world of despair".  In short, it's not Clinton's sex that voters and donors aren't buying.  It's her message.

    But, the media isn't simply trying to sell her message.  It simply reports facts and then attaches a story to those facts. Right now, the facts don't look good for Sen. Clinton.  Since, at the present time, Obama leads the pledged delegate count by more than 150 votes, it will, mathematically speaking, take an extraordinary set of circumstances for Clinton to win the nomination.  Because of the proportional division of delegates in each of these states, Clinton will need to win Texas by more than 5 percent, Ohio by more than 10 percent, and then Pennsylvania by more than 15.  If she accomplishes this, she will still lag behind in the pledged count by more than 50 delegates, and then, going into the convention, she'll need to persuade most of the superdelegates to vote her way instead of voting for the person who "won" the primaries.  It's not impossible, but it is a tall order. 

    So the media's story is this:  Clinton's behind, and it'll take a miracle for her to win this thing.  Sounds like "anti-Clinton" bias, but it's not.  In sports terms, it's as if the commentators of a basketball game are declaring that a miracle is required when a team is behind by 20 points with 10 minutes to go. It's makes for perfect media coverage, because -- if Obama wins Texas and Ohio -- the media can either be perceived as prescient in reporting on the strength of the Obama campaign or -- if Clinton wins Texas and Ohio -- it can set itself up to promote Clinton as "the comeback candidate" who made extraordinary campaign decisions and turned her candidacy around. 

    The media wants to boost ratings for political coverage, and we, the people like television drama.  "Generic" reporting of political stories just doesn't cut it in this media age.  By promoting the "inevitable juggernaut vs. the miracle comeback" line, they can inject drama into an otherwise ordinary primary campaign season.

    The Clinton campaign's claim of "media bias" simply doesn't hold water, and it won't be effective.  If the hope is to "play the refs", as Michael Jordan used to say when complaining about calls with the intent of getting favorable treatment down the line, then Clinton's skill at doing this is abysmal, and she will little traction beyond her core support.

    Essentially, the problem lies in that there are 2 kinds of complainants when it comes to the media bias line:

    (1) People who want to promote public distrust of the "media" reports with the hope that future reports will be more favorable. It doesn't matter what the "media" reports -- it's always biased against your people and your ideas, so that when the news favors your candidate's message, it MUST be truth, but when the news reports go the other way, it's media manipulation.  The goal is not to talk about today's stories. It's to influence tomorrow's stories so that future stories about your candidate get cast in a better light than they otherwise deserve.  Republicans are especially good at this, having echoed the "liberal media elite" party line for well over 40 years.

(2) Losers.

    In general, the broadcast media tries to tell stories that are indicative of the current mood of the people who watch their shows instead of trying to persuade them in any ideological direction. These reflect the current zeitgeist rather than promoting a message.  Candidates who campaign against media bias instead of campaigning against their opponent's message usually receive very little sympathy or support from the media that they need for successful campaigns