Pew study finds media practially campaigned for Obama



A study by the highly-respected Pew Research Center finds in the final days of the presidential election the mainstream media gave glowing coverage to Democrat nominee Barack Obama, and harshly negative coverage to Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

“During this final week, from October 29 to November 5, positive stories about Obama (29%) outnumbered negative ones (19%) by 10 points,” Pew reports. “Only during the week of his nominating convention was the treatment in the press more favorable.”

The mainstream media did not extend that courtesy to Romney.  “For Mitt Romney in the final week, the tone of coverage remained largely unchanged from the previous two weeks. Negative stories in the press outnumbered positive ones 33% to 16%,” Pew reports.

Not only did the mainstream media focus its Romney stories on the negative, they focused their attention on burying voters in positive stories on Obama at a level nearly unseen in previous elections.

“After receiving roughly identical levels of coverage for most of October, in the last week of campaigning Obama was a significant presence in eight out of 10 campaign stories compared with six in 10 for Romney – one of the biggest disparities in any week after Labor Day,” Pew finds.

Originally blogged at Congressman Steve Stockman.

Obama administration proposes scrapping limits on national debt

The Obama administration Friday proposed eliminating the "debt ceiling," allowing the federal government to increase spending and borrowing without limit.

CNS News reports journalist Al Hunt, host of Bloomberg TV's “Political Capital,” asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner if he believes “we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Geithner chimed.

It would be up to Congress to eliminate the debt ceiling.  Republicans and Democrats agreed last year to raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion to a record $16.394 trillion.  "As of the close of business on Thursday, the Treasury had only $154.3 billion of that $2.4 trillion in new borrowing authority left," CNS reports.