In the last election, 89 percent of reporters voted for the incumbent. The content of news programs reveals that reporters allowed the personal biases reflected in this voting pattern to affect their news coverage: 54 percent of coverage concerning the challenger was negative, compared with only 30 percent of that concerning the incumbent. The argument is logically most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it ['ignores the possibility that there was more negative news worthy of reporting concerning the challenger than there was concerning the incumbent', 'ignores the possibility that reporters generally fear losing access to incumbents more than they fear losing access to challengers', "ignores the possibility that the electorate's voting behavior is not significantly affected by the content of coverage of candidates", 'presumes, without providing justification, that both candidates received equal amounts of coverage overall']