Which candidate running for president in 2012 has drawn the most negative coverage in the press over the last five months? Here's a hint: The results aren't even close.If you said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, congratulations, you had it exactly wrong. Perry actually has enjoyed the most positive coverage of all the candidates, according to the latest study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
For all the criticism of Perry's policies regarding HPV vaccinations and immigrant tuition rates and his recent stumbles in Republican debates, positive press coverage has outweighed negative coverage by a 32 percent to 20 percent margin (with the balance being judged neutral).
By far the worst negative press coverage has been directed at President Obama. The study shows reporters have treated him with the kind of positive feelings most of us reserve for the Internal Revenue Service or oral surgery without anesthetic. The Pew study found negative outweighed positive reporting of Obama four to one.
During not a single week of media reporting (the study looked at results week by week) was more than 10 percent of the president's coverage positive in tone. Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an often-controversial figure who received the most negative coverage of any of the GOP candidates, did substantially better than that.
The results will probably surprise a lot of voters, particularly Republicans for whom the notion that the media is liberal-tilting and irredeemably biased in favor of Democrats is so deeply ingrained. Certainly, critics won't be able to fault the study as misleading or inaccurate. Pew's researchers looked at a wide range of media, including blogs, and even featured a computer algorithmic analysis that perused 11,500 news outlets each day.
Those familiar with the inner workings of the media, however, are probably not surprised at all. The negative coverage of Obama does not reflect a bias against the president or the Democratic Party any more than negative coverage of President George W. Bush during his time in the Oval Office suggested a bias against Republicans or Texans.
Instead, it merely reflects the reality that whoever sits in the White House is going to draw negative press coverage. It is the essence of journalism to question authority and to seek accountability. The negative coverage was not so much of candidate Obama but of President Obama, the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.
FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE BALTIMORE SUN
