Center for Media and Public Affairs

The Center for Media and Public Affairs is a research and educational organization that tracks the media. CMPA conducts scientific studies on the news and entertainment media. “CMPA's goal is to provide an empirical basis for ongoing debates over media coverage and impact through well-documented, timely, and readable studies.”

CMPA is an affiliate of George Mason University. The president of CMPA is a professor at the university.

The main page of the Web site features “Obama Watch 2010”. There are three links to stories from other news sites about media coverage of the Obama administration. There is a tab for studies CMPA has conducted. There are studies covering everything from sex and violence in popular culture to media coverage of the Catholic Church. The studies are organized according to their topic, with about nine categories possible. The categories are ‘Election Watch 2008”, “Previous Elections”, “Political Humor”, “Political Studies”, “Internal Affairs”, “Science and Health Reporting”, “Entertainment Studies”, “Religion and the Media” and “All Other Studies”. Each category has anywhere from five to 20 studies. On the home page is a list of “sites we like”. All sites are dedicated to journalism.

There was a study done on the 2008 presidential election. The study looked at coverage August 24 to November 3 on ABC, NBC and CBS evening news shows. The study found that President Obama received the best media coverage the CMPA has ever measured for a presidential nominee.

CMPA is helpful for journalists because it includes many different articles on a specific topic. If a journalist is working on a story about late-night talk shows and politics, then he or she would be able to see the research done by CMPA. It is a shortcut for journalist in their research.

The site was very upfront about being empirical and unbiased. This seemed pretty innovative in a media world full of opinions. The site focused on entertainment media, which showed the importance entertainment has in society today. Many of the studies proved to be a wake up call for journalists. Many studies showed how sources manipulated the media for their benefit. It also revealed the huge differences between television networks and its political beliefs.

I would rate this site a 4 because I thought it excelled at its mission. It seemed to offer an objective view at journalism and present the material in a straightforward manner. The Web site was easy to navigate and the studies were easy to understand. Most of the studies measured television stories, and I would like to have seen more variety in types of media. However, all the studies were very thorough and interesting.