Blinded by the Right

The famous line about statistics that if you torture statistics long enough they will admit to anything was proved true over the weekend in a column by Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell.

No doubt responding to complaints from conservatives that Sen. Barack Obama got better coverage than Sen. John McCain, Ms. Howell got out her ruler and proclaimed, yes! Barack was treated better.

However, as Editor & Publisher quickly pointed out, the way Ms. Howell used her statistics it was unsurprising that she came to the conclusions that she did. First her statistics showed that most of the stories were of the horse race variety (i.e. who was ahead) and since Obama was ahead most of the year, shockingly that meant he got better coverage.

She also found more articles about Obama than McCain. Perhaps she thought either a.) the Post should have stopped covering Obama and the Democrats once McCain wrapped up his nomination in March, or b.) during March through June period McCain should have gotten coverage even though he wasn't in the news. (Perhaps there could have been stories on his exhaustive vice presidential nomination process!)

And third Ms. Howell mentions that there more op-ed pieces favoring Obama. While she noted the Post had several conservatives columnist and not all were gung-ho about McCain, she didn't says some were strongly against her. (You can almost hear the statistics screaming!)

While this may seem trivial, as Greg Mitchell said in E&P It’s an important question because once any conventional wisdom is set, it is almost impossible to dislodge it. One only has to look at the 2000 election where the conventional wisdom that formed was that Al Gore ran a bad campaign, he blew the election, and so forth. Ask anyone that's what they will say.

What most people, such as Ms. Howell, won't say is that the Post, and other media, had quite a hand in giving George Bush the White House through its "War Against Gore." Only in the quiet of books will people like former Post reporter John Harris explain what really happened in 2000.

As Harris explained, A number of members of the Gang of 500 are convinced that the main reason George W. Bush won the White House and Al Gore lost was that Gore’s regular press pack included the trio of Katherine “Kit” Seelye (of the New York Times), Ceci Connolly (of the Washington Post), and Sandra Sobieraj (of the Associated Press).

So where was the paragraph in Ms. Howell story saying "while coverage may have appeared to be more favorable to Mr. Obama, the coverage didn't cost Mr. McCain the White House like the Post's coverage in 2000 cost Mr. Gore the White House"?

Well, Ms. Howell, where is that comment?