Join the John McCain News Hunt With NewsTrust and OffTheBus

We want to get the real story on the media and McCain, so OffTheBus is partnering with NewsTrust from June 2 - June 8. NewsTrust is a nonprofit social news site devoted to good journalism and its online tools make it really easy for anyone to rate the news based on quality - fairness, sourcing, context and other core principles of good journalism. Throughout the week, OffTheBus and NewsTrust will post your results -- and prominently feature the top stories, sources and reviewers on both sites.

JOIN US: Just get an OffTheBus account at NewsTrust and get started. Sign up using this special url. http://www.newstrust.net/signup/huffpo.htm

WHAT TO DO:

Rate as many articles as you can using NewsTrust's tools. To review a story, simply click on its "Review It" link from this NewsTrust John McCain topic page. The tool will take you directly to the article on the publisher's site, where a second window will appear with NewsTrust's review form. You can give an article a single overall recommendation, or rate it according to other criteria like fairness or context, simply by clicking on the stars for each criteria. Answer as many or as few questions as you like. NewsTrust tools will make it convenient for you to participate -- you can review stories whenever you have the time, whether it's at 3am or 3pm.

Submit stories for review. Once you've had a chance to review a couple stories, we invite you to submit your own articles to NewsTrust using their submission form. To quickly submit stories from anywhere on the web, we recommend you use their handy bookmarklet, which speeds up the submission process and only takes a few seconds to install on your web browser.

For more tips on how to join our news hunt, check the welcome page on NewsTrust:
http://www.newstrust.net/partners/huffpo/

GET PROJECT UPDATES: We'll blog review results daily. OffTheBus members participating in this project will receive several project updates from us, too.

The end goal? OffTheBus is planning a series of distributed investigations on Sen. McCain, and this is a great way to get started. We'll educate ourselves on McCain before launching more in-depth investigations. Plus, our media survey should tell us where there's the most work to get done!

Follow Amanda Michel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AmandaRMichel

Comments

[loax]

Tha is because Obama DESERVES better press. McCain is nothing more than a Bush in wolfs clothing, and will continue to destroy America.

[JulieSA]

According to this survey, most Americans think that the press are giving and will give more favorable coverage to Obama than to McCain. This is true even if you break out people by party. Even Democrats think that Obama will get better coverage than McCain.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/voters_give_media_failing_grades_in_objectivity_for_election_2008

[tea in the harbor]

Reality will give Obama better press than McCain. When reporting the facts makes one candidate look better than the other, it is not biased journalism, it is a less qualified candidate!

[Softnsweet]

It is a good idea for McCain. I wish Obama would of thought of it.

[Corpsman1]

I wish there was some investigative reporter somewhere, either in print news or on cable or network news, with real American-history savvy, who would remind their right-wing interviewees (and therefore all Americans) that as McCain/Bush and the Republicans and neocons keep pointing at Democrats and singing their "appeaseme­nt/weak-on­-defense" mantra that they are forgetting that Eisenhower (R) was the peace candidate in 1952 saying he would "go to Korea" to end the stalemate, and that in 1968 Nixon (R) was the peace candidate proclaiming, "We need new leadership to end the war (in Vietnam) and bring a lasting peace to the Pacific." It is wise for Republicans to remember their own anti-war/peace initiatives and stop calling Obama and Democrats in general appeasers because in such labeling they are also criticizing Eisenhower and Nixon. Obama is the only candidate with a clear and wise plan for both exiting Iraq at a sane rate while engaging adversaries in discussions rather than war.