News & Observer Responds to Criticism on Edwards Coverage
Sunday, January 07, 2007 -    reddit
It seems that a number of people have been writing to the News & Observer complaining that John Edwards is getting too much positive coverage from the paper. Seems a little strange, since this is a large North Carolina newspaper, Edwards' home state which he represented for six years in the United States Senate. According to the numbers gathered by one of their staff writers, the truth doesn't really bare out such a conclusion.
I looked back over the N&O's coverage of Edwards for the last several years. The paper wrote 62 stories that mentioned Edwards last year, up from 45 in 2005. By comparison, there were 407 stories in 2004, when he was a candidate for president and vice president; and 286 in 2003 and 124 in 2002, when Edwards was in the Senate. Of the 62 Edwards stories in 2006, five were on the front page. Two were in the last week of the year, when Edwards announced his candidacy from New Orleans.
I don't read the Observer because I generally find local news to be quite boring, and I don't even see any kind of problem here. Edwards had already run for president once, served the state as a Senator and is obviously very well known here; I don't think it's all that unreasonable for the local papers to report on what he's been doing over the past few years, especially when it's been clear that he was going to run again.
As Christensen says, The N&O is never going to satisfy the hard-core anti-Edwards sentiment, which is virulent in a state that voted for Bush-Cheney over Kerry-Edwards in 2004. But you should look for more, not fewer, Edwards stories as the campaign cranks up. And The N&O, as the home-state newspaper, should lead in bringing to bear the scrutiny that this presidential candidate needs to face in a national campaign.
Oddly, North Carolina helped Democrats take back control of the House by turning over a couple of seats previously held by red staters. Another couple of seats were within 5% of flipping, and Elizabeth Dole isn't exactly the most popular person around heading into 2008. And to be fair, a lot of states voted for Bush in 2004, that's why he got reelected. It was a mistake obviously and has hurt the country over all, but NC can always make amends by doing the right thing and voting blue in two years.
tags: John Edwards, Democrats, 2008 Elections, Bush, Politics
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