EMAIL DETAILS

Is President Obama getting a free pass from the media? Not really.
Posted by * Chris
Cillizza<http://www.washingtonpost.com/chris-cillizza/2011/02/24/AB7OmvI_page.html>
* at 02:29 PM ET, 04/24/2012

One of the most common refrains you hear as a reporter is that the
reason a particular politician is doing well is because the media is giving
him/her a pass.

That’s especially true when it comes to President Obama who, many
conservatives believe, gets glowing coverage from the media — particularly
when compared to how political reporters have covered the men and women
running to be the Republican nominee. (Heck, the New York Times ombusdman
urged the Old Gray Lady to take an “aggressive look” at President
Obama<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-hard-look-at-the-president.html?_r=2>on
Sunday.)

The problem with that free pass theory? The data just doesn’t bear it out,
at least according to a new Pew Research Center study
<http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/romney_report>that analyzed the
“tone and volume of candidate coverage during the 2012 primary seasons from
January 2 - April 15”.

In the 15 weeks in which Pew conducted its analysis, President Obama’s
negative coverage outweighed his positive coverage in *every single one of
them* — the only candidate Pew studied where that was true.

“While a sitting president may have access to the ‘bully pulpit’ that does
not mean he has control of the media narrative, particularly during the
other party’s primary season,” concluded Pew’s Tom Rosenstiel in a memo
detailing the findings. (There is a ton of fascinating stuff in the study;
you can read it in full
here<http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/romney_report>
.)

Here’s a chart that tells that story:

In no week did the amount of positive press coverage of Obama go above 25
percent and for the entire 15 weeks it averaged 18 percent positive as
compared to 48 percent neutral and 34 percent negative.

Compare those numbers to Romney’s positive/negative press coverage in the
Pew data. In those same 15 weeks, positive coverage of Romney outweighed
negative coverage in six of them while four more weeks were roughly a draw
between positive and negative coverage. (That means there were five weeks
where Romney’s negative coverage outdistanced his positive coverage. Math!)

Overall, 39 percent of Romney’s press coverage was positive as compared to
29 percent which was neutral and 32 percent that was negative.

There are, of course, mitigating factors to these numbers. The Republican
primary, naturally, dominated the media’s attention during this 15-week
period and virtually every word out of the GOP field’s collective mouth was
negative about President Obama. The resulting coverage, which detailed
those claims, therefore, was negative.

And, as Rosenstiel¿ points out, much of the Obama coverage also mentioned
the still-lagging economy — making it more likely to tip into the negative
territory.

Those caveats aside, it’s still striking that for all the chatter about
Obama’s preferential treatment by the media, the data tells a *very *different
story. And the data doesn’t lie.


--

Alexander Snyder-Mackler
(302) 598-867