According to a new Media Research Center study, both major Utah newspapers parroted the overwhelmingly negative national media narrative of Sen. Mike Lee’s anti-Obamacare/government funding fight.Â
Writes the MRC’s Rich Noyes at NewsBusters:
Since the end of the partial government shutdown last month, national newspapers have zeroed in on conservative Utah Senator Mike Lee as a potential political casualty due to his leadership in developing the strategy of using the federal government’s October 1 funding deadline as a way to stop ObamaCare. “After a 16-day government shutdown, it’s Lee who faces a revolt within his own party,” the Washington Post’sPhilip Rucker declared in an October 23 front-page story.
But for a statewide politician like Mike Lee (who doesn’t face the voters again until 2016), the reviews that truly matter are those of his home state’s media. Thus, Media Research Center analysts reviewed coverage from Utah’s two largest newspapers, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, analyzing all 116 news stories, editorials and opinion columns that talked about Lee’s role in the shutdown. Our study included all stories from September 17 through October 31 — a period beginning two weeks before the start of the shutdown and ending two weeks after the shutdown concluded. [Full results after the jump.]
The results show Lee faced voluminous, and largely hostile, local coverage of his role in the shutdown. By a margin of 33-to-1, editorial opinion at both newspapers was harshly against the strategy of linking ObamaCare’s fate to government funding. Coverage in the news pages was scarcely more balanced, with 32 news stories tilting against the conservatives’ strategy, vs. just three in favor and 13 conveying a balanced debate.
