Writing for Time's Swampland blog, Ana Marie Cox observes that the scant available data from the new CMPA study on evening news bias in the networks' evening news shows, the most significant finding is the lack of bias existent in said networks.

COX (7/28/08): The authors [of the study] admit that "most on-air statements during that time could not be classified as positive or negative," and that, in fact, found "less than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three networks combinedf." (I actually think that this apparent LACK of bias should be the real headline of the study.) Let's be generous and say that the average was about 1.5 "opinionated" statements a night--that's a grand total of about 60 "biased" statements since the study began on June 8.

Similarly, progressive media critic Bob Somerby today notes:

Simply put, CMPA's studies are rarely worth the pixels they burn. (Neither are similar studies from other orgs.) The notion that CMPA can quantify "positive/negative" coverage usually turns out rather poorly. On what basis does CMPA decide that some statement is "positive" or "negative?"Often, organizations which offer such studies have arcane notions of what those terms mean. When they give examples, we sometimes learn that their idea of a "negative" comment doesn't track our own real closely. And sometimes, these orgs give no examples at all. We are left with no real idea of what they're talking about.

Somerby also points out that some people are equating "network evening news shows" with "the media", when in fact only evening news shows were examiined. Click on the links above for more on the issue.