David Greene, a White House correspondent for National Public Radio, said the level of organization in the Barack Obama campaign hadn't been seen in a long time or if ever before.
About 150 people gathered in the HUB-Robeson Center auditorium Tuesday night to listen to Greene and three other professionals in the journalism field look back and evaluate, from a media standpoint, the 2008 presidential election.
"The Press and the Presidential Election: How the News Media Covered the 2008 Campaign" was held by the Penn State Department of Journalism for students to hear after the election what it was like to cover the campaign, Ford Risley, head of the journalism department, said.
The panel discussion began with Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an organization that analyzes the content on 48 different news outlets everyday, speaking about his organization and some of the journalism trends he saw in the recent election.
During the election season the organization conducted extra studies that looked at the tone of the coverage, Rosenstiel said.
"I believe that the political press is becoming more passive and reactive than it used to be," Rosenstiel said.
While he said this was difficult to quantify, he credited this trend with fewer people in the news room and therefore less time to do enterprise reporting.
He also said that most of the time cable news consists of conversation panels made up of people with vested interests and "not pure reportical work," among other reasons.
Rosenstiel also talked about "the horse race bias" he saw in some coverage because of polls and the discussion and focus on them.
"Horse race" stories mostly concern strategy and tactics, and Rosenstiel said they dominated the media this election.
Rosenstiel said he saw the proof of "horse race bias" in the way Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. was covered based on his popularity in the polls.
"When McCain was rising in the polls prior to Sept. 15 his coverage was more positive and, as prospects for his winning became more negative his coverage became dimmer," he said.
Afterward, three journalists joined Rosenstiel on the stage and took turns answering questions from the moderator Russell Eshleman, a senior lecturer in the College of Communications.
The journalists were first asked if they had been accused of favoring Barack Obama or McCain at any point during the election.
Rosenstiel said the problem of bias wasn't deliberate liberal bias that most people think, but it is "unconscious bias that doesn't let you see the tilt."
Another question posed to the panelists was if they thought any issues should have been expanded on in their coverage. Greene said he thought policy ideas and policy proposals were not reported on enough.
"A lot of time these stories didn't show up and when they did it was under the assumption that people were seven steps [ahead] in understanding," Greene said. "People needed reminders of what the basics were."
