Is The Bee "in the tank" for Barack Obama?

No.

Is Obama receiving more media coverage than John McCain?

Yes.

It's more than three months from the election, and stories about the competing Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns are already daily fodder in The Bee, a measure of the immense interest the election is attracting.

The theme last week, as reported in various news media outlets and pushed along by McCain's camp, is that the press can't get enough of Obama, showering him with attention at McCain's expense.

Statistics confirm the impression.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (www.journalism.org) has created a Campaign Coverage Index that tracks the candidates' media exposure – including coverage in newspapers, broadcast television, cable television, radio and online.

The index also follows and quantifies campaign storylines of the week, such as Obama's trip overseas, the controversial New Yorker magazine cover, the Iraq war as an issue, etc.

What it has found is that, in the six weeks since Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race, "Obama has been a significant factor in 78 percent of the stories and McCain in 51 percent."

The tracking was from June 9 through July 20 and was based on 1,809 campaign stories.

The definition of "significant factor" is that 25 percent of a story must be about Obama or McCain.

That finding helped propel the notion of imbalance into the news, including a front-page story in Wednesday's Bee focusing on McCain headlined, "His campaign's video takes aim at 'Obamamania' in the media."

The story was based on the release of a Web video by the McCain campaign called "The media is in LOVE with Barack," accompanied by the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You," sung by Frankie Valli.

Part of a fundraising pitch, the campaign told potential donors in an e-mail that the news media has a "bizarre fascination with Barack Obama" and that "if it wasn't so serious, it would be funny."

The video, of course, unleashed a round of news coverage about imbalanced news coverage. Some of the better stories were by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com), James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) and John Kass of the Chicago Tribune (www.chicagotribune.com).

So what do the statistics mean?

Well, at The Bee, not much.

The number and play of stories for Obama and McCain have been fairly equal for the past six weeks, and stories about both campaigns often run on the same page inside the A section.

Last Wednesday's front-page story about the McCain Web video, for example, was twinned with a story about Obama's Middle East visit.

That doesn't mean, however, the stories are equally interesting or have similar news value.

And although partisans will not – and never will – agree, measuring balance by counting the number of paragraphs in a story is simplistic, deceptive and ultimately self-defeating.

If that's all there is to it, editors should just pull out a ruler, measure out an equal number of paragraphs and be done with it. That's nonsense, of course, and an abdication of responsibility.

Mark Melnicoe, the paper's national editor, is often the person picking the campaign stories. He is keenly aware of the election's heightened interest.

"Space and relative news value of stories vary by the day, and it's this combination that I grapple with constantly," said Melnicoe, who said he is striving for fairness and balance in the paper's campaign coverage.

"On the one hand, we want to be fair to both candidates (and in the end I'm confident we will be seen that way by fair-minded people)," he said in an e-mail. "But I would say that being fair does not necessarily mean an exact, to-the-inch balance of stories.

"Obama's is a historic candidacy that commands a certain amount of attention, perhaps beyond the norm. McCain is a more traditional candidate. That is not to say that both sides won't get the play needed to inform our readers of any news and analysis they need to make an informed choice in November. They will."

On any given day, he explained, the coverage can seem uneven, based on the news of the day, pointing to Obama's overseas trip as an example.

"We can't control the news. If one candidate is doing better than the other – in the polls, in fundraising or simply in avoiding problems or proposing solutions – that will make our news pages, and charges of bias no doubt will surface.

"I accept that as part of the process. What we can do is represent both campaigns' responses to events and to each other."

Some readers already are doing the counting.

Like John Paul of Carmichael, a McCain supporter.

"Try this little exercise," he said in an e-mail. "Do a paragraph count. Then count the number of paragraphs in an Obama piece that tell the McCain/ Republican view/response. Do the same for a McCain piece, and count the paragraphs devoted to the Obama/Democrat view/response.

"Do the percentages. I have. Draw your own conclusions. I have. Seems to me that The Bee, along with ABC, CBS, NBC and the NY Times, is in the tank."

One irony in all this is that McCain has warm relations with the press, going back at least to his 2000 presidential campaign foray.

There is now an allegation, pushed along by the Obama camp, that the news media is giving McCain a free pass on his penchant for gaffes, such as referring to the "Iraq-Pakistan border" or to Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany, and how that might be caused by his age, 71.

The subject was the focus of Kurtz's story in the Post last week. Obama's supporters said the press is letting McCain get away with slip-ups that they'd lambaste Obama for.

And to think, as the campaign tit-for-tat goes full bore, this is still only July, with weeks and weeks of the campaign left to tread.

The Public Editor deals with complaints and concerns about The Sacramento Bee's content. His opinions are his own. You can contact the Public Editor by mail at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852; or by calling him directly at (916) 321-1250.