NEW YORK — Television news’ royalty will fly in to meet Barack Obama during this week’s overseas trip: CBS chief anchor Katie Couric in Jordan on Tuesday, ABC’s Charles Gibson in Israel on Wednesday and NBC’s Brian Williams in Germany on Thursday.
The anchor blessing raises anew the issue of fairness in campaign coverage.
The news media have devoted significantly more attention to the Democrat since Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her campaign, according to research conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
News executives say there are reasons for the disparity, such as the continuing story about whether Clinton’s and Obama’s supporters can reconcile. They even partly blame Republican candidate John McCain. By criticizing Obama for a lack of foreign-policy experience, McCain raised the stakes for Obama’s trip, “especially if he winds up going into two war zones,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News.
For each of the weeks between June 9 and July 13, Obama had a much more significant media presence. The Project for Excellence in Journalism evaluates more than 300 political stories each week to measure whether each candidate is talked about in more than 25 percent of the stories.
Every week, Obama played an important role in more than two-thirds of the stories. Sure, there are some weeks Obama’s going to make more news, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director. But every week?
“No matter how understandable it is given the newness of the candidate and the historical nature of Obama’s candidacy, in the end it’s probably not fair to McCain,” he said.
