aquapub

A while back, I started a thread called, "MSM Demonstrates Double Standard," pointing out the absurdity of the media's conclusion that Rush Limbaugh's chronic back pain and resulting addiction to painkillers was far, far more newsworthy than another National Enquirer story about a presidential candidate cheating on the wife he dragged around the country for pity while she tried to survive breast cancer.

The responses from liberals were typically mind-numming, off-topic, and illiterate. Iriemon rushed in to make fun of me for using the National Enquirer for my source, which obviously was not what I was doing. Nifty Drifty insisted that the glaring discrepency was due to John Edwards being innocent, which is not true...you get the picture.

But now the numbers are in. When you type in the terms, "John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter," you get 148 articles over 10 months-all but 42 of which eagerly mention that it is a National Enquirer story, all but 23 of which were published only after he came clean.

When you type in "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers," searching within the first 10 months of his "scandal" as with Edwards (began 10 months ago), you get 946 articles, with less than a quarter of those stories mentioning that the National Enquirer was the source.

The bottom line: Our liberal-run news media ran almost a thousand stories perpetuating a bogus invented scandal against a conservative pundit while omitting the tabloid origins of the story and then ran 23 whole stories about a US presidential candidate cheating on his wife while she helped him pander for the soccer mom-cancer-pity vote...the vast majority of which eagerly mention the tabloid origins of the scandal at every turn.

That's called bias.

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They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they're just going to tax ‘businesses!’ So unless you buy something from a ‘business,’ like groceries or clothes or gasoline ... or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small ‘business,’ don't worry ... it's not going to affect you. -Fred Thompson

bhkad

You are absolutely right!

They have abused their 'license.' I don't mean license in the literal sense, but in the sense that they have taken advantage of what was originally intended to be an objective presentation of both sides of a story so that we might be able to make up our minds and make decisions about the country, the government and our lives.

Now they are basically paid lobbyists.

I wish someone would lead a real campaign to reform the media.

They are so big and powerful that no one can stand up to them and everyone is beholden to them or dependent on them so no one with power would dare take them on and no one without power can afford to do battle with them.

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But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060508.php3

GottaHurt

No need. We have talk radio and FOX news, is it any wonder why they dominate the ratings, or cause such rage in liberals at the mere mention of them.

American know where to turn for responsible media.

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Pain can be such a beautiful thing

MC.no.spin

Don't forget how they blew up this b.s. story, too.

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The heart of human intelligence is pattern recognition ~ Ray Kurzweill

Singularity

Since I found your claim to be interesting, I decided to put it to the test to see if this was, in fact, indicative of all web-based searches. You didn't mention which engine you used to search for the articles related to the exact terms "John Edwards", "Rielle Hunter", "Rush Limbaugh", and "painkillers", so I decided to conduct this experiment using three of the more popular ones: Google.com, Yahoo.com, and MSN.com. I also decided to use the terms at three online news sources; Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. This was to see how many historical articles each contained on both respective scandals. Furthermore, this eliminated blogs, internet commentary, and other non-mainstream sites that the three search engines would certainly include.

1. Google.com results:

Simply typing in the terms "John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter", google.com brought back 176,000 results:

"John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" - Google Search

"Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" brought back only 31,900 results:

"Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" - Google Search

In an attempt to reduce the numbers, I added the term "National Enquirer" along with "John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter". And it did, down from 176,000 to 60,600 ("John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" "National Enquirer" - Google Search). Adding "National Enquirer" to "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkllers" returned 2,580 results ("Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" "National Enquirer" - Google Search).

2. Yahoo.com results:

"John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter" returned 3,000,000 results ("John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" - Yahoo! Search Results). "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" produced 184,000 ("Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" - Yahoo! Search Results). Adding the term "National Enquirer" to both reduced the numbers for Edwards to 670,000 ("John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" "National Enquirer" - Yahoo! Search Results), and 14,300 for Rush Limbaugh ("Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" "National Enquirer" - Yahoo! Search Results).

3. MSN.com results:

The terms "John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter" returned 1,090,000 results ("John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" - Live Search). "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" only 78,700 ("Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" - Live Search). Adding the term "National Enquirer" dropped Edward's results to 130,000 ("John Edwards" "Rielle Hunter" "National Enquirer" - Live Search) and Rush's to 5,750 ("Rush Limbaugh" "painkillers" "National Enquirer" - Live Search).

4. Fox News.com results:

"John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter" produced no results (http://search2.foxnews.com/search?ie...elle+Hunter%22). "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" produced 32 stories (http://search2.foxnews.com/search?ie...painkillers%22). Adding the term "National Enquirer" would produce no further results for Edwards obviously; adding it to Rush's scandal reduced the number to 5 (http://search2.foxnews.com/search?ie...al+Enquirer%22).

5. MSNBC.com results:

"John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter" produced 151 results (- Search Results - MSNBC.com). "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" produced 168 (- Search Results - MSNBC.com). Adding the term "National Enquirer" dropped Edward's results to 7 and Rush's results to 2 (- Search Results - MSNBC.com).

CNN.com results:

CNN produced five results for Edwards (http://search.cnn.com/search.jsp?query="John%20Edwards"%20%20"Rielle%20H unter"&type=web&sortBy=date&intl=false), and 24 for Rush (http://search.cnn.com/search.jsp?query="Rush%20Limbaugh"%20%20"painkille rs"&type=web&sortBy=date&intl=false).

Conclusion: Since 2003, FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC have run between 7 to 234 articles regarding Rush Limbaugh and painkillers. Since Edwards and Hunter have come under suspicion in 2007, there have been between 7 and 156 articles regarding the scandal. The three major search engines--Google, Yahoo, and MSN--returned a total of 4,266,000 results for Edwards and Rielle Hunter, while only returning 294,600 for Rush Limbaugh and painkillers.

aquapub

We have talk radio...for now. The left's "Fairness" Doctrine seeks to end all that by force.

GottaHurt

Let them vote in the Fairness Doctrine, I laugh in their face.

The people of America will speak when conservative talk radio moves to XM/Sirius and those/that company booms with new subscribers.

aquapub

1) To answer your question, the database I searched was Lexis Nexis, which archives virtually all the "mainstream" media articles published in all the major papers, as well as TV news, blogs, etc.

2) The sources you searched were Internet sources, which to my understanding can produce mostly blog and newswire results, even the Fox/CNN searches, which are not reflective of the reporting of supposedly objective news sources. Anyone can write anything in blogs. The sources I'm referring to all have an expectation of objectivity on them. I did not run a cable news comparison on Lexis Nexis, but I can if it would shed light on whether or not TV news has been as blatantly biased on this as the papers have.

3) As for your conclusion, it's significant that almost all reporting on the Edwards thing has happened either on blogs or SINCE the scandal was forced out into the open by Edwards admitting it. This is not the case for the far less newsworthy Rush "scandal." The media tried to bury this just like they initially did with Lewinsky. Yet when they cover Republican scandals, they don't try to bury them at all, even when they've been utterly debunked (Bush-coke, Bush-National Guard, Libby, Gonzales, Hastert, Delay, etc.)

aquapub

Here's what happens when you run a TV news search with this same criteria on Lexis Nexis:

When you search, "John Edwards" and "Rielle Hunter," you get 58 TV news stories, only 2 of which were before Edwards forced the media to cover it by admitting his guilt. About 2/3 of those stories also are quick to mention that it is a National Enquirer story.

When you search, "Rush Limbaugh" and "painkillers" during the first 10 months of THAT "scandal," you get 286 TV news stories. About 1/5 of those stories mention the National Enquirer as the origin.

Singularity

Totally agree with the expectations of objectivity--not only from context of the article, but from a numerical standpoint. Your post tickled my curiosity, so I wanted to see if this was indicative of all web-based searches. Were they numerically biased across the board? That's what I wanted to find out.

Again, I totally agree with your original post. Although i'm not defending either party, the Rush Limbaugh scandal blew up five years ago in many mainstream outlets based on The National Enquirer tabloid article from what I recall. Yet no one really covered the Edward's scandal when the tabloid broke the story. I think I saw a blurb on it by Fox News, but it seemed to come and go rather quickly.

Now i'll be the first to point out that The Enquirer isn't exactly the best news source, and I certainly took my pot shots at it plenty of times in the past, but I don't think that's the issue. Fair is fair. If the mainstream media is gonna leap all over Limbaugh's story based on a tabloid article that was unconfirmed at the time, I think Edwards deserved the same amount of coverage on his own scandal.

I mean, if you are gonna be biased when reporting the news, fine. But at least REPORT the news.