Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Jun 27, 2008 at 9:40 PM Pacific

Is ABC really any better than FOX?

Everybody knows that FOX News has a conservative tilt to its coverage, making the network an easy target for those of us who aren't on the right. But while we may disagree with FOX's perspective, at least we know that it has one.

ABC, on the other hand, is nowhere near as overt as FOX about its own biases, and given that 8 million people watch its news broadcast each evening -- an audience about 5x larger than FOX's total primetime viewership -- ABC's negative impact could be both more insidious and more impactful.

I haven't performed any kind of rigorous analysis, but based on the ABC broadcasts I've watched, the political coverage has been heavily slanted against Barack Obama and has been far more charitable to John McCain. (And who could forget the debate in Philadelphia.)

Anyway, I thought tonight's coverage of the Clinton-Obama unity rally was a particularly good example of how ABC is negatively biased against Obama. In fact, compared to ABC, the FOX News report seemed positively glowing to me. I've posted both reports after the jump if you care to subject yourself to the torture of watching them.

ABC:

FOX (starts at 0:40):

Is ABC really any better than FOX?

Everybody knows that FOX News has a conservative tilt to its coverage, making the network an easy target for those of us who aren't on the right. But while we may disagree with FOX's perspective, at least we know that it has one.

ABC, on the other hand, is nowhere near as overt as FOX about its own biases, and given that 8 million people watch its news broadcast each evening -- an audience about 5x larger than FOX's total primetime viewership -- ABC's negative impact could be both more insidious and more impactful.

I haven't performed any kind of rigorous analysis, but based on the ABC broadcasts I've watched, the political coverage has been heavily slanted against Barack Obama and has been far more charitable to John McCain. (And who could forget the debate in Philadelphia.)

Anyway, I thought tonight's coverage of the Clinton-Obama unity rally was a particularly good example of how ABC is negatively biased against Obama. In fact, compared to ABC, the FOX News report seemed positively glowing to me. I've posted both reports after the jump if you care to subject yourself to the torture of watching them.

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