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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 02, 2008
Finally, the crisis in financial capitalism was knocked into second place on the news agenda by Campaign '08. On the intermediate day--after the Senate approved the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout plan and before the House of Representatives is due to vote on it for a second time--the Presidential election campaign was Story of the Day. The occasion was the debate in St Louis between the Vice-Presidential candidates, scheduled for television's primetime. CBS sent anchor Katie Couric to Missouri to preview the showdown between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden; ABC and NBC kept their anchors in New York; but the lead story on all three newscasts was filed from the debate site at Washington University.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 02, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
VEEP SHOWDOWN TAKE CENTER STAGE Finally, the crisis in financial capitalism was knocked into second place on the news agenda by Campaign '08. On the intermediate day--after the Senate approved the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout plan and before the House of Representatives is due to vote on it for a second time--the Presidential election campaign was Story of the Day. The occasion was the debate in St Louis between the Vice-Presidential candidates, scheduled for television's primetime. CBS sent anchor Katie Couric to Missouri to preview the showdown between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden; ABC and NBC kept their anchors in New York; but the lead story on all three newscasts was filed from the debate site at Washington University.
This is the seventh Presidential election in which a debate has been scheduled between the two running mates. NBC's Andrea Mitchell predicted that it would get "unprecedented attention." The reason is Palin. Mitchell portrayed the Governor of Alaska as undergoing a "sharp drop" in voters' perceptions as being qualified for high office--from her "electrifying debut" just a month ago to "seeing her falter in interviews." For those of you wanting direct links, the interviews by ABC anchor Charles Gibson were on foreign policy, God's plan for Iraq, the economy and the Mommy Wars; those by CBS anchor Katie Couric were on the financial crisis, foreign policy and personal politics; Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions have been on the Supreme Court, church and state, the Vice Presidency, Dick Cheney and on favorite movies.
A would-be Second Sister told ABC's Kate Snow that Palin's practice sessions for the debate had been like "the worst college exam prep session ever." For Republican candidate John McCain, Palin's performance "could render a critical verdict on his judgment" in selecting her, mused CBS' Dean Reynolds (no link). He quoted McCain's own defense of his running mate: "If there is a Georgetown cocktail party person who calls himself 'a conservative' and does not like her--good luck!" As for Democrat Biden, CBS' Chip Reid (no link) heard Barack Obama's campaign play the expectations game on his behalf by calling Palin "one of the best debaters in American politics." Reid restrained himself: "Now that may be an overstatement."
PREGAME SHOW All three networks had their political pundits lay out the do's and don't's for Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. NBC political director Chuck Todd set the bar low for Palin. Her goal is "to survive" while Biden's is "not to get baited." Bob Schieffer (no link), anchor of CBS' Face the Nation, required Palin to reassure voters that "she has a basic grasp of the important issues…she has had such great difficulty in expressing herself." Meanwhile, Biden has to guard against seeming like a "blabbermouth who is condescending, who acts like he is some know-it-all." On ABC, This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos was in New York City to watch the debate on television--Schieffer and Todd were in St Louis--and he offered "kind of mirror image advice." Biden has to "button down" and show some self-control; Palin has to "loosen up" to avoid seeming tightly scripted, robotic and frozen.
CBS LOVES VEEPS With anchor Katie Couric on the scene in St Louis, CBS rounded out its debate coverage with a couple of Veep features. Jeff Greenfield's weekly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly took us through a highlight reel of historical running mate selections since 1940, when they were first picked by the Presidential candidate himself and not by his party's national convention. Good, according to Greenfield, were Lyndon Johnson, George Bush and Al Gore; Bad were Spiro Agnew, Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle; Ugly was Thomas Eagleton.
Sarah Palin and Joe Biden were on Greenfield's Good side for the first of Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions: who was history's most impressive Vice President? Biden picked Johnson; Palin chose Bush. Their responses to Couric's second question--an assessment of Dick Cheney, the current office holder--were night and day. Biden was totally serious, condemning Cheney for "shredding the Constitution" and "condoning torture." Palin was flippant, bemoaning the fact that Cheney allowed himself to become a his own caricature by shooting his friend in the face during a quail hunt. Palin called it "the duck hunting accident." It was the caricature she objected to, not the buckshot in the face.
Couric thirdly asked them both about their favorite movie title. Presumably a coincidence, each chose the sports genre. Biden loves Chariots of Fire while Palin cited both Rudy and Hoosiers. "Do you have a favorite scene?" Couric inquired. "When they win!" beamed Palin.
BATTLEGROUND DISPATCH The Vice-Presidential Debate aside, ABC and NBC both ran Campaign '08 news and features. The news came from the John McCain campaign, with its decision to throw in the towel in Michigan, shutting down its advertising effort and most of its field offices. ABC's George Stephanopoulos called it "big news" reducing McCain's swing state targets to maybe three that John Kerry won in 2004: "There are many more paths to victory for Barack Obama than for John McCain." NBC political director Chuck Todd too called McCain's "a very narrow path." He identified two of the three states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
As for features, ABC continued its 50 States in 50 Days series with Jeffrey Kofman describing the swing state of Florida. The state's northwest is solidly Republican and its southeast is solidly Democratic. Across the center, the highway travels through undecided counties stretching from Daytona to Tampa: "As I-4 goes, so goes Florida--and maybe the country." NBC's issues series Where They Stand moved on to Social Security. John Yang called the parties' platforms "dramatically different" in their proposals for an overhaul to keep the fund solvent past 2041: McCain would allow investment of Social Security funds in the stock market; Obama would extend the payroll tax to include annual earnings in excess to $250,000. Yang stated that Social Security is a key voting issue in swing states whose populations skew older--Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida.
NBC's Kevin Tibbles took us time-traveling back to the South Side of Chicago in the early '80s to describe Obama's first work as a community organizer. He was based in a tiny office in a church rectory, running a job center for workers laid off when the local steel mills closed and agitating for asbestos removal in the municipal housing projects. Loretta Augustine-Herron delivered the neighborhood's endorsement: "I am not waiting for Barack to come back and do anything for me because he showed me how to do it for myself."
WHAT NO ONE WANTS TO REPEAT ABC's Jake Tapper tried to ramp up the tension about Friday's Capitol Hill vote on the federal bailout of the financial industry. "It is a real cliffhanger," he warned. "As of right now they do not have the votes to pass this bill." Confusingly, Tapper added that "no one wants a repeat of what happened Monday" when the House of Representatives did defeat the bill--confusing because if "no one" truly desired a repeat then it would be nowhere close to a cliffhanger. Perhaps Tapper meant that the Noe vote was the problem not the defeat: thus his explanation that Congressional leaders will hold no vote at all unless passage is assured.
CBS' Wyatt Andrews went into most detail about the extra $110bn that the Senate put on top of the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout proposal, adding "almost every popular tax break circulating on Capitol Hill." The Alternative Minimum Tax has been adjusted to relieve the middle class; credits were extended to alternative energy industries; rural school districts received more funding, benefiting western Congressional districts in particular; property tax breaks pleased liberal legislators. NBC's Tom Costello posed the key question: "Did they offend any fiscally conservative Democrats with these new tax breaks?"--thereby converting some Ayes into Noes.
HEALTH NOTES WERE ONE THE NORM All three networks took a turn from their unwavering focus on financial crisis and campaign politics to revisit the health beat, in normal times a staple. NBC's Robert Bazell and CBS' Nancy Cordes both covered the Food & Drug Administration panel that is contemplating widening the current ban on over-the-counter cold and cough remedies for toddlers. If extended, it would apply to all pre-schoolers. Bazell explained that "by law companies only have to prove the ingredients are safe and effective in adults. There have been few studies in children." As to safety, Cordes offered the statistic that accidental cough medicine overdoses send 7,000 children to emergency rooms each year. As to efficacy, she asked Big Pharma's over-the-counter spokeswoman Linda Suydam how she knew the products worked. "We know that they work because parents use them," came the unconvincing reply.
ABC's A Closer Look chose breast cancer. Laura Marquez, a patient herself, publicized armyofwomen.org, the online registry that is hoping to sign up one million women research volunteers. The registry is being organized by Dr Susan Love and funded by the Avon Foundation. The idea is to study causes and prevention of tumors rather than the current emphasis on diagnosis and treatment. Love herself had appeared with NBC anchor Brian Williams Wednesday where she explained that, because 70% of breast cancers occur in women with no known risk factor, she needed to recruit the healthy as well as patients into the panel. "It may be that we find out that it is a virus," Love suggested.
JAGGED PEAKS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA Wednesday's discovery of cash and ID belonging to missing aviator Steve Fossett led searchers to find the wreckage of his plane. ABC's Brian Rooney (embargoed link) told us that the shredded plane--engine 300 feet away from fuselage--was discovered among the "jagged peaks" of the Sierra Nevada. How did CBS' John Blackstone describe the crash site? Under the Sierra Nevada's "jagged peaks." Blackstone added that no human remains have been found. Search officials told him that was not unusual "in an area with so many wild animals."
BOOSTERISM ABC's New York based newscast closed with a touch of boosterism for its hometown's tourist industry. Bill Weir showed us footage of USS Intrepid, the World World II era ship, being ushered back by an armada of tugboats after dry dock renovation to its berth on the Hudson River where it has been converted into the Air & Sea Museum. "She is wearing 7,000 gallons of new paint and she is almost ready to accept a million visitors a year."
It or She? What is an aircraft carrier museum's gender?
THOUGHTS CONCERNING PERCEPTIONS OF PRESS BIAS The results (in detail here) of the Citizens' Media Scorecard of Thursday night's Vice-Presidential debate in St Louis offer hints of one phenomenon that lies behind ideological complaints of media bias.
First, let us stipulate that Rate the Debates is an all-volunteer panel, so its results cannot be scientifically projected to the viewing audience at large as if it were a random sample. Nevertheless there are stark enough differences in the reaction to the debate between partisans of the two candidates that it can offer insights.
On the headline question of who won the debate, the ninety-minute gabfest seemed to do little more than confirm partisans in their already-held opinion: 89% of Barack Obama supporters said Joe Biden won the debate; 80% of John McCain supporters said Sarah Palin won.
This topline statistic appears to be first and foremost an expression of loyalty. Split the debate up into its three component sections--economic policy, social policy, foreign policy--and Biden's margin of victory in each is greater than in the overall ranking. Obama supporters were virtually unanimous that Biden won each section (92%, 96%, 96%); McCain supporters were less knee-jerk loyal in assigning victory to Palin (73%, 84%, 71%).
Go one level more inside the statistics and there is further evidence that McCain partisans were unhappy with how the debate turned out. That is reflected in their assessment of moderator Gwen Ifill. Almost across the board they rated her lower than Obama supporters--on her overall performance, her lack of bias, her seriousness, her intelligence, her plainspokenness and so.
Maybe these negative ratings reflect an assessment of objective anti-Palin animus in Ifill. She can certainly be faulted for not having been upfront about Breakthrough, the book she plans to publish on Inauguration Day, which clearly stands a better chance of being a bestseller if Obama happens to take the oath of office on that day than McCain.
But, given the results of a scientific poll that shows viewers assessing Biden as a clear winner (CNN/Opinion Research 51%-36%), maybe this is an instance of blaming the messenger. In the partisan heat of this election battle, it would be highly unusual for a Palin fan to concede directly that the debate had made her seem less prepared than Biden to be Vice President. It would be much easier to express such disquiet indirectly, by finding fault with the way Ifill conducted the contest instead.
RATING THE VEEP DEBATE Moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS received more plaudits from supporters of Barack Obama than from John McCain's supporters for her conduct of the Vice-Presidential debate in St Louis.
Volunteers joined an online panel to rate the debate on a Citizens' Media Scorecard hosted by freepress.net, where these results are crossposted. More than 2,500 responded. The two groups of partisans were loyal to their own candidate: 80% of McCain supporters though Sarah Palin won the debate; 89% of Obama supporters gave the nod to Joe Biden. The differences emerge in how satisfied they were with Ifill's performance.
Ifill received higher marks from Obama partisans for conducting an extremely serious and relevant debate (74% v 56% for McCain's), for showing no favoritism (94% v 52%), and for overall excellence (55% v 23%). By wide margins compared with McCain backers, more Obama supporters found Ifill to be extremely intelligent (65% v 33%) and plainspoken (71% v 46%), and saw her avoiding the pitfalls of being controling (93% v 63%) and opinionated (95% v 62%).
Both groups tended to criticize her for being too reticent (70% of Obama voters, 75% of McCain's) in challenging the factual accuracy of the debaters' statements.
The debate covered a wide range of topics. Large majorities of both groups of supporters combined approved of Ifill's selection as giving just the right amount of time to six major issues: nuclear proliferation (76%), global warming (74%), war & peace (73%), the global war on terrorism (73%), tax policy (70%) and energy policy (70%).
Both groups gave Ifill a black mark for skipping the topics of Social Security (84%) and immigration (81%). The major disagreement was on the topic of poverty: half of the McCain voters in our panel thought its treatment was "just right" (53%); most of the Obama voters called it "not enough" (83%).
McCain supporters were less likely to believe that Palin won the debate in its foreign policy section (71%) and on economic issues (73%) than on social policies (84%). Obama supporters believed almost unanimously that Biden prevailed in all three topic areas (96%, 92% and 96% respectively).
About half of Obama's supporters (51%) criticized Ifill for failing to spend more time questioning Palin about her readiness and qualifications for the Vice-Presidential office whereas many fewer McCain supporters (29%) offered equivalent criticism concerning questions about Biden. By contrast, most McCain supporters welcomed the debate for being "extremely helpful" in learning about Palin's policy positions (68% v 57% of Obama supporters learning about Biden). Compare the lessons learned about Palin in this debate with the lessons learned about McCain himself last week in the first Presidential debate: twice as many McCain supporters found St Louis extremely helpful as a learning experience (39% v 20%) compared with Mississippi.
Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, of the 2631 volunteers who participated in the scorecard, Obama supporters vastly outnumbered McCain's (2144 v 229). To correct for that imbalance, these results have been reported by contrasting the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them, which would have drowned out the Republican perspective. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.
The two groups of supporters tended to watch the debate on different outlets. MSNBC (27%), PBS (22%) and CNN (17%) were the favorite outlet for Obama partisans. Fox News Channel was the favorite for fully 54% of the McCain voters in the panel.
Again, as we found after the Mississippi debate, we need to recruit a more diverse panel for subsequent debates. We repeat our request to Fox News to give us a hand with some outreach.
This is the seventh Presidential election in which a debate has been scheduled between the two running mates. NBC's Andrea Mitchell predicted that it would get "unprecedented attention." The reason is Palin. Mitchell portrayed the Governor of Alaska as undergoing a "sharp drop" in voters' perceptions as being qualified for high office--from her "electrifying debut" just a month ago to "seeing her falter in interviews." For those of you wanting direct links, the interviews by ABC anchor Charles Gibson were on foreign policy, God's plan for Iraq, the economy and the Mommy Wars; those by CBS anchor Katie Couric were on the financial crisis, foreign policy and personal politics; Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions have been on the Supreme Court, church and state, the Vice Presidency, Dick Cheney and on favorite movies.
A would-be Second Sister told ABC's Kate Snow that Palin's practice sessions for the debate had been like "the worst college exam prep session ever." For Republican candidate John McCain, Palin's performance "could render a critical verdict on his judgment" in selecting her, mused CBS' Dean Reynolds (no link). He quoted McCain's own defense of his running mate: "If there is a Georgetown cocktail party person who calls himself 'a conservative' and does not like her--good luck!" As for Democrat Biden, CBS' Chip Reid (no link) heard Barack Obama's campaign play the expectations game on his behalf by calling Palin "one of the best debaters in American politics." Reid restrained himself: "Now that may be an overstatement."
PREGAME SHOW All three networks had their political pundits lay out the do's and don't's for Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. NBC political director Chuck Todd set the bar low for Palin. Her goal is "to survive" while Biden's is "not to get baited." Bob Schieffer (no link), anchor of CBS' Face the Nation, required Palin to reassure voters that "she has a basic grasp of the important issues…she has had such great difficulty in expressing herself." Meanwhile, Biden has to guard against seeming like a "blabbermouth who is condescending, who acts like he is some know-it-all." On ABC, This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos was in New York City to watch the debate on television--Schieffer and Todd were in St Louis--and he offered "kind of mirror image advice." Biden has to "button down" and show some self-control; Palin has to "loosen up" to avoid seeming tightly scripted, robotic and frozen.
CBS LOVES VEEPS With anchor Katie Couric on the scene in St Louis, CBS rounded out its debate coverage with a couple of Veep features. Jeff Greenfield's weekly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly took us through a highlight reel of historical running mate selections since 1940, when they were first picked by the Presidential candidate himself and not by his party's national convention. Good, according to Greenfield, were Lyndon Johnson, George Bush and Al Gore; Bad were Spiro Agnew, Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle; Ugly was Thomas Eagleton.
Sarah Palin and Joe Biden were on Greenfield's Good side for the first of Couric's Vice-Presidential Questions: who was history's most impressive Vice President? Biden picked Johnson; Palin chose Bush. Their responses to Couric's second question--an assessment of Dick Cheney, the current office holder--were night and day. Biden was totally serious, condemning Cheney for "shredding the Constitution" and "condoning torture." Palin was flippant, bemoaning the fact that Cheney allowed himself to become a his own caricature by shooting his friend in the face during a quail hunt. Palin called it "the duck hunting accident." It was the caricature she objected to, not the buckshot in the face.
Couric thirdly asked them both about their favorite movie title. Presumably a coincidence, each chose the sports genre. Biden loves Chariots of Fire while Palin cited both Rudy and Hoosiers. "Do you have a favorite scene?" Couric inquired. "When they win!" beamed Palin.
BATTLEGROUND DISPATCH The Vice-Presidential Debate aside, ABC and NBC both ran Campaign '08 news and features. The news came from the John McCain campaign, with its decision to throw in the towel in Michigan, shutting down its advertising effort and most of its field offices. ABC's George Stephanopoulos called it "big news" reducing McCain's swing state targets to maybe three that John Kerry won in 2004: "There are many more paths to victory for Barack Obama than for John McCain." NBC political director Chuck Todd too called McCain's "a very narrow path." He identified two of the three states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
As for features, ABC continued its 50 States in 50 Days series with Jeffrey Kofman describing the swing state of Florida. The state's northwest is solidly Republican and its southeast is solidly Democratic. Across the center, the highway travels through undecided counties stretching from Daytona to Tampa: "As I-4 goes, so goes Florida--and maybe the country." NBC's issues series Where They Stand moved on to Social Security. John Yang called the parties' platforms "dramatically different" in their proposals for an overhaul to keep the fund solvent past 2041: McCain would allow investment of Social Security funds in the stock market; Obama would extend the payroll tax to include annual earnings in excess to $250,000. Yang stated that Social Security is a key voting issue in swing states whose populations skew older--Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida.
NBC's Kevin Tibbles took us time-traveling back to the South Side of Chicago in the early '80s to describe Obama's first work as a community organizer. He was based in a tiny office in a church rectory, running a job center for workers laid off when the local steel mills closed and agitating for asbestos removal in the municipal housing projects. Loretta Augustine-Herron delivered the neighborhood's endorsement: "I am not waiting for Barack to come back and do anything for me because he showed me how to do it for myself."
WHAT NO ONE WANTS TO REPEAT ABC's Jake Tapper tried to ramp up the tension about Friday's Capitol Hill vote on the federal bailout of the financial industry. "It is a real cliffhanger," he warned. "As of right now they do not have the votes to pass this bill." Confusingly, Tapper added that "no one wants a repeat of what happened Monday" when the House of Representatives did defeat the bill--confusing because if "no one" truly desired a repeat then it would be nowhere close to a cliffhanger. Perhaps Tapper meant that the Noe vote was the problem not the defeat: thus his explanation that Congressional leaders will hold no vote at all unless passage is assured.
CBS' Wyatt Andrews went into most detail about the extra $110bn that the Senate put on top of the Treasury Department's $700bn bailout proposal, adding "almost every popular tax break circulating on Capitol Hill." The Alternative Minimum Tax has been adjusted to relieve the middle class; credits were extended to alternative energy industries; rural school districts received more funding, benefiting western Congressional districts in particular; property tax breaks pleased liberal legislators. NBC's Tom Costello posed the key question: "Did they offend any fiscally conservative Democrats with these new tax breaks?"--thereby converting some Ayes into Noes.
HEALTH NOTES WERE ONE THE NORM All three networks took a turn from their unwavering focus on financial crisis and campaign politics to revisit the health beat, in normal times a staple. NBC's Robert Bazell and CBS' Nancy Cordes both covered the Food & Drug Administration panel that is contemplating widening the current ban on over-the-counter cold and cough remedies for toddlers. If extended, it would apply to all pre-schoolers. Bazell explained that "by law companies only have to prove the ingredients are safe and effective in adults. There have been few studies in children." As to safety, Cordes offered the statistic that accidental cough medicine overdoses send 7,000 children to emergency rooms each year. As to efficacy, she asked Big Pharma's over-the-counter spokeswoman Linda Suydam how she knew the products worked. "We know that they work because parents use them," came the unconvincing reply.
ABC's A Closer Look chose breast cancer. Laura Marquez, a patient herself, publicized armyofwomen.org, the online registry that is hoping to sign up one million women research volunteers. The registry is being organized by Dr Susan Love and funded by the Avon Foundation. The idea is to study causes and prevention of tumors rather than the current emphasis on diagnosis and treatment. Love herself had appeared with NBC anchor Brian Williams Wednesday where she explained that, because 70% of breast cancers occur in women with no known risk factor, she needed to recruit the healthy as well as patients into the panel. "It may be that we find out that it is a virus," Love suggested.
JAGGED PEAKS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA Wednesday's discovery of cash and ID belonging to missing aviator Steve Fossett led searchers to find the wreckage of his plane. ABC's Brian Rooney (embargoed link) told us that the shredded plane--engine 300 feet away from fuselage--was discovered among the "jagged peaks" of the Sierra Nevada. How did CBS' John Blackstone describe the crash site? Under the Sierra Nevada's "jagged peaks." Blackstone added that no human remains have been found. Search officials told him that was not unusual "in an area with so many wild animals."
BOOSTERISM ABC's New York based newscast closed with a touch of boosterism for its hometown's tourist industry. Bill Weir showed us footage of USS Intrepid, the World World II era ship, being ushered back by an armada of tugboats after dry dock renovation to its berth on the Hudson River where it has been converted into the Air & Sea Museum. "She is wearing 7,000 gallons of new paint and she is almost ready to accept a million visitors a year."
It or She? What is an aircraft carrier museum's gender?
THOUGHTS CONCERNING PERCEPTIONS OF PRESS BIAS The results (in detail here) of the Citizens' Media Scorecard of Thursday night's Vice-Presidential debate in St Louis offer hints of one phenomenon that lies behind ideological complaints of media bias.
First, let us stipulate that Rate the Debates is an all-volunteer panel, so its results cannot be scientifically projected to the viewing audience at large as if it were a random sample. Nevertheless there are stark enough differences in the reaction to the debate between partisans of the two candidates that it can offer insights.
On the headline question of who won the debate, the ninety-minute gabfest seemed to do little more than confirm partisans in their already-held opinion: 89% of Barack Obama supporters said Joe Biden won the debate; 80% of John McCain supporters said Sarah Palin won.
This topline statistic appears to be first and foremost an expression of loyalty. Split the debate up into its three component sections--economic policy, social policy, foreign policy--and Biden's margin of victory in each is greater than in the overall ranking. Obama supporters were virtually unanimous that Biden won each section (92%, 96%, 96%); McCain supporters were less knee-jerk loyal in assigning victory to Palin (73%, 84%, 71%).
Go one level more inside the statistics and there is further evidence that McCain partisans were unhappy with how the debate turned out. That is reflected in their assessment of moderator Gwen Ifill. Almost across the board they rated her lower than Obama supporters--on her overall performance, her lack of bias, her seriousness, her intelligence, her plainspokenness and so.
Maybe these negative ratings reflect an assessment of objective anti-Palin animus in Ifill. She can certainly be faulted for not having been upfront about Breakthrough, the book she plans to publish on Inauguration Day, which clearly stands a better chance of being a bestseller if Obama happens to take the oath of office on that day than McCain.
But, given the results of a scientific poll that shows viewers assessing Biden as a clear winner (CNN/Opinion Research 51%-36%), maybe this is an instance of blaming the messenger. In the partisan heat of this election battle, it would be highly unusual for a Palin fan to concede directly that the debate had made her seem less prepared than Biden to be Vice President. It would be much easier to express such disquiet indirectly, by finding fault with the way Ifill conducted the contest instead.
RATING THE VEEP DEBATE Moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS received more plaudits from supporters of Barack Obama than from John McCain's supporters for her conduct of the Vice-Presidential debate in St Louis.
Volunteers joined an online panel to rate the debate on a Citizens' Media Scorecard hosted by freepress.net, where these results are crossposted. More than 2,500 responded. The two groups of partisans were loyal to their own candidate: 80% of McCain supporters though Sarah Palin won the debate; 89% of Obama supporters gave the nod to Joe Biden. The differences emerge in how satisfied they were with Ifill's performance.
Ifill received higher marks from Obama partisans for conducting an extremely serious and relevant debate (74% v 56% for McCain's), for showing no favoritism (94% v 52%), and for overall excellence (55% v 23%). By wide margins compared with McCain backers, more Obama supporters found Ifill to be extremely intelligent (65% v 33%) and plainspoken (71% v 46%), and saw her avoiding the pitfalls of being controling (93% v 63%) and opinionated (95% v 62%).
Both groups tended to criticize her for being too reticent (70% of Obama voters, 75% of McCain's) in challenging the factual accuracy of the debaters' statements.
The debate covered a wide range of topics. Large majorities of both groups of supporters combined approved of Ifill's selection as giving just the right amount of time to six major issues: nuclear proliferation (76%), global warming (74%), war & peace (73%), the global war on terrorism (73%), tax policy (70%) and energy policy (70%).
Both groups gave Ifill a black mark for skipping the topics of Social Security (84%) and immigration (81%). The major disagreement was on the topic of poverty: half of the McCain voters in our panel thought its treatment was "just right" (53%); most of the Obama voters called it "not enough" (83%).
McCain supporters were less likely to believe that Palin won the debate in its foreign policy section (71%) and on economic issues (73%) than on social policies (84%). Obama supporters believed almost unanimously that Biden prevailed in all three topic areas (96%, 92% and 96% respectively).
About half of Obama's supporters (51%) criticized Ifill for failing to spend more time questioning Palin about her readiness and qualifications for the Vice-Presidential office whereas many fewer McCain supporters (29%) offered equivalent criticism concerning questions about Biden. By contrast, most McCain supporters welcomed the debate for being "extremely helpful" in learning about Palin's policy positions (68% v 57% of Obama supporters learning about Biden). Compare the lessons learned about Palin in this debate with the lessons learned about McCain himself last week in the first Presidential debate: twice as many McCain supporters found St Louis extremely helpful as a learning experience (39% v 20%) compared with Mississippi.
Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, of the 2631 volunteers who participated in the scorecard, Obama supporters vastly outnumbered McCain's (2144 v 229). To correct for that imbalance, these results have been reported by contrasting the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them, which would have drowned out the Republican perspective. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.
The two groups of supporters tended to watch the debate on different outlets. MSNBC (27%), PBS (22%) and CNN (17%) were the favorite outlet for Obama partisans. Fox News Channel was the favorite for fully 54% of the McCain voters in the panel.
Again, as we found after the Mississippi debate, we need to recruit a more diverse panel for subsequent debates. We repeat our request to Fox News to give us a hand with some outreach.
