Press Release
Ifill Gets High Marks from Citizens Media Panel
Contact: Timothy Karr, 201-533-8838
NEW YORK -- Moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS received more plaudits from supporters of Barack Obama than from supporters of John McCain for her conduct during the vice presidential debate in St. Louis on Thursday night.
2,500 volunteers joined an online panel to rate the debate using Free Press' "Citizens Media Scorecard." The two groups of partisans were loyal to their own candidate: 80% of McCain supporters thought 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," said Andrew Tyndall of TyndallReport.com, who devised the survey and performed the analysis.
Praise for Ifill
Ifill received higher marks from Obama partisans for conducting an extremely serious and relevant debate (74% vs. 56% for McCain's), for showing no favoritism (94% vs. 52%), and for overall excellence (55% vs. 23%).
By wide margins compared with McCain backers, more Obama supporters found Ifill to be extremely intelligent (65% vs. 33%) and plainspoken (71% vs. 46%), and saw her avoiding the pitfalls of being controlling (93% vs. 63%) and opinionated (95% vs. 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 Issues
The debate covered a wide range of domestic topics. Large majorities of both groups of supporters approved of Ifill's choice of questions as giving just the right amount of time to six major issues: nuclear proliferation (76%), global warming (74%), war and peace (73%), the global war on terrorism (73%), tax policy (70%), and energy policy (70%).
But both groups scolded Ifill 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 the topic's 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).
Questions of Experience
About half of Obama's supporters (51%) criticized Ifill for failing to spend more time questioning Palin about her readiness and qualifications to be vice president, whereas far fewer McCain supporters (29%) offered equivalent criticism concerning questions about Biden.
"Given Palin's relative inexperience on the national stage, this asymmetry should come as no surprise," Tyndall said. "It would have been hard for Ifill to maintain a neutral role and at the same time explicitly address the experience gap."
McCain supporters were more likely to find the debate "extremely helpful" in learning about their own candidate's policy positions (68% vs. 57% of Obama supporters learning about Biden) and were twice as likely to have found the debate useful in helping them decide whom to support than an equivalent group of supporters was last week (39% vs. 20%) after hearing McCain debate in Mississippi.
Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, Obama supporters considerably outnumbered McCain's. To correct for that imbalance, these results have been reported by contrasting the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.
Where They Watched
The two groups of supporters tended to watch the debate on different outlets. MSNBC (27%), PBS (22%) and CNN (17%) were the favorite outlets for Obama partisans. Fox News Channel was the favorite for fully 54% of the McCain voters in the panel.
Both McCain and Obama supporters said that the Internet was their primary source of election-related news (52% vs. 52%), but they were divided in their view of which news source offered the best quality coverage. Obama supporters chose public radio (52%) and public television (50%) as "excellent" sources for election coverage. Only 12% and 6.2%, respectively, of McCain supporters agreed.
Andrew Tyndall and Free Press experts are available to comment on these results. To schedule an appearance, contact Jen Howard at (202) 265-1490 x22 or press@freepress.net.
For more information, visit www.RatetheDebates.org.
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Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net
The Tyndall Report has monitored the weekday nightly newscasts of three broadcast networks since 1987. This is Andrew Tyndall's sixth cycle keeping tabs on TV news coverage of the presidential election campaigns. Go to tyndallreport.com to follow each day's story rundown and search its database of almost 9,000 network news videostreams, including more than 1,100 stories, appearing on the network news on Campaign 2008.
2,500 volunteers joined an online panel to rate the debate using Free Press' "Citizens Media Scorecard." The two groups of partisans were loyal to their own candidate: 80% of McCain supporters thought 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," said Andrew Tyndall of TyndallReport.com, who devised the survey and performed the analysis.
Praise for Ifill
Ifill received higher marks from Obama partisans for conducting an extremely serious and relevant debate (74% vs. 56% for McCain's), for showing no favoritism (94% vs. 52%), and for overall excellence (55% vs. 23%).
By wide margins compared with McCain backers, more Obama supporters found Ifill to be extremely intelligent (65% vs. 33%) and plainspoken (71% vs. 46%), and saw her avoiding the pitfalls of being controlling (93% vs. 63%) and opinionated (95% vs. 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 Issues
The debate covered a wide range of domestic topics. Large majorities of both groups of supporters approved of Ifill's choice of questions as giving just the right amount of time to six major issues: nuclear proliferation (76%), global warming (74%), war and peace (73%), the global war on terrorism (73%), tax policy (70%), and energy policy (70%).
But both groups scolded Ifill 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 the topic's 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).
Questions of Experience
About half of Obama's supporters (51%) criticized Ifill for failing to spend more time questioning Palin about her readiness and qualifications to be vice president, whereas far fewer McCain supporters (29%) offered equivalent criticism concerning questions about Biden.
"Given Palin's relative inexperience on the national stage, this asymmetry should come as no surprise," Tyndall said. "It would have been hard for Ifill to maintain a neutral role and at the same time explicitly address the experience gap."
McCain supporters were more likely to find the debate "extremely helpful" in learning about their own candidate's policy positions (68% vs. 57% of Obama supporters learning about Biden) and were twice as likely to have found the debate useful in helping them decide whom to support than an equivalent group of supporters was last week (39% vs. 20%) after hearing McCain debate in Mississippi.
Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, Obama supporters considerably outnumbered McCain's. To correct for that imbalance, these results have been reported by contrasting the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.
Where They Watched
The two groups of supporters tended to watch the debate on different outlets. MSNBC (27%), PBS (22%) and CNN (17%) were the favorite outlets for Obama partisans. Fox News Channel was the favorite for fully 54% of the McCain voters in the panel.
Both McCain and Obama supporters said that the Internet was their primary source of election-related news (52% vs. 52%), but they were divided in their view of which news source offered the best quality coverage. Obama supporters chose public radio (52%) and public television (50%) as "excellent" sources for election coverage. Only 12% and 6.2%, respectively, of McCain supporters agreed.
Andrew Tyndall and Free Press experts are available to comment on these results. To schedule an appearance, contact Jen Howard at (202) 265-1490 x22 or press@freepress.net.
For more information, visit www.RatetheDebates.org.
###
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net
The Tyndall Report has monitored the weekday nightly newscasts of three broadcast networks since 1987. This is Andrew Tyndall's sixth cycle keeping tabs on TV news coverage of the presidential election campaigns. Go to tyndallreport.com to follow each day's story rundown and search its database of almost 9,000 network news videostreams, including more than 1,100 stories, appearing on the network news on Campaign 2008.
