In Why SBY Won? we point out to the result of a survey last year indicating that Megawati might have hit a “wall” in the presidential election just held two weeks ago. Her gender status as a woman, indecisiveness, and her weak initiatives to combat corruption are the “wall” that had led the majority of voters to think about other candidate(s). But in the era where perception is reality, the possession of apparatus or instruments that can influence the public’s perception is also a crucial factor in winning a political race, including in the presidential election. The “wall” could be turned down or strengthened by those instruments.

Of many instruments, media and survey groups (institutions that conduct and report surveys) are two the most influential. The media provide information and news, and the survey groups dig and feed the data to the public. What is more powerful than data and words to influence people’s perception? There is only one: picture. But media such as TV and the Internet also provide picture. All in all, media and survey groups are greatly influential in building people’s perception of any issues including of the presidential candidates.

In the US where the campaign for presidential election is heating up, the role of media and survey groups are extremely crucial. The polls from the well known and reliable polling institution such as the Gallup are closely monitored and reported by the media to the public. The newspapers’ headlines and editorial sections are closely followed by readers. Newspapers’ editors have to decide what pictures and headlines that related to the presidential campaign to be put on the front page. The traditionally liberal newspapers such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune will likely put editorial views and headlines that will indirectly or cleverly support the Liberal candidate. In this year presidential election for instance, it is not a secret that the New York Times is endorsing the democratic candidate, John Kerry. The newspaper has heavily reported bad news in Iraq by an almost 300:1 scale—three hundreds bad news over one good news. Bad news in Iraq, as the Times believes, will destroy Bush’s reputation and leadership. If one relies only on the Times for his or her source of information, one doesn’t need long to conclude that Bush’s Iraq policy is a total mess and catastrophic failure.

But thanks to the availability of the conservative leaning media such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, as well as the growing presence of the alternative media such as the Internet, the New York Times’ depictions of the Iraq are not entirely truthful. They are biased. They are deliberately designed to support the Liberal candidate.

The TV stations, mainly the news programs of the traditional media (ABC, NBC and CBS) as well as the Cable News (Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN Headlines) can also strongly affect people’s perception of the presidential candidates. In fact, the TV media is the most effective instrument in influencing people’s perception. There is hardly any presentation that is more than powerful than a combination of picture and narration (words). And this is what drove the CBS with their September 8’s 60 minutes program when they aired documents suggesting that Bush’s military Guard service was dishonorable.  His records, as the CBS reported, were “sugar-coded” and Bush also dismissed his superior’ command, something that is considered a ‘big sin’ in the military. If the records were authentic and true, little doubt that Bush’s credibility would be greatly damaged which could potentially affect the election outcome. As it turned out, even with a casual observation, the documents are forgery, or as Christopher Hitchens of the Vanity Fair said, “it was a fabrication.” Like boomerang, while it was originally aimed at destroying Bush’s credibility, the September 8’s CBS news program has in turn destroyed itself. The reputation of Dan Rather, the anchor of the program, is in a serious jeopardy and only a resignation could perhaps save his reputation with dignity.

Why CBS, or the 60 minutes’ producer and the anchor were willing to do such a suicidal act? Assume they didn’t know that the documents were forged. However, the producer, Mary Maples and Rather, using a little bit common sense, could have checked to themselves that the documents were fake. But as Bernie Goldberg, the one time CBS veteran and the author of Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite, said that Rather is living in a bubble—a liberal bubble. As Goldberg described, a liberal Rather who is living in a liberal bubble will never ask skeptic question about the document because he believes in the document, and worse, he wants the documents to be true. That’s why, even after admitting that the documents are fake, in an interview with Chicago Sun at the next day, Rather said that he still believes that the documents are authentic.

The position of the US media on the current presidential election is best summarized by Evan Thomas of the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek magazine. In PBS’s “Inside Washington” program on July 11, Thomas, a liberal himself, said, “The media, I think, want Kerry to win. And I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there's going to be this glow about them that is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points.”

And during the Democratic National Convention in July in Boston, the New York Times conducted an informal poll of journalists that showed they favor John Kerry for president over President Bush by 3 to 1, while reporters based in Washington, D.C., support the Massachusetts senator by 12 to 1.  Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic. With such an attitude, it is not reasonable to expect a non-biased or objective reporting and analysis from the journalists of both presidential candidates.

Back to the just ended presidential election in Indonesia. In its report on the election runoff, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) said that in the run up to the election day, the press, especially some electronic media, began to favor one candidate over the other as indicated in their unbalanced news coverage. State television station TVRI in particular has been criticized for showing favoritism toward the incumbent President, Megawati, although it is registered as a public broadcaster. But the report also cited that in the weeks prior to voting day a local news station appeared partial in favor of Susilo.  So, it seemed that bias runs in both directions. Both candidates took the advantageous and disadvantageous of the biases.

What about the polls? Have the survey groups committed bias? See Megawati: a victim of biased polls?