Study: 3 Times More Negative Than Positive Reports About McCain

Want to talk media bias?

A new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that since the Republican National Convention, there have been three times more negative press reports about John McCain than positive ones.

By contrast, during the same period, media coverage of Obama has been more positive than negative.

Think this might be impacting voter perceptions?

Here are the study's key findings (emphasis added): 

[C]overage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one—the most unfavorable of all four candidates—according to the study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

For Obama during this period, just over a third of the stories were clearly positive in tone (36%), while a similar number (35%) were neutral or mixed. A smaller number (29%) were negative.

For McCain, by comparison, nearly six in ten of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57%), while fewer than two in ten (14%) were positive.

Fascinating. Yet, what's most interesting about this study is it appears media indeed responded to complaints that Obama was getting all their attention.

Their solution?

Add negative reports about McCain:

McCain did succeed in erasing one advantage Obama enjoyed earlier in the campaign—the level of media exposure each candidate received. Since the end of August, the two rivals have been in a virtual dead heat in the amount of attention paid, and when vice presidential candidates are added to the mix the Republican ticket has the edge. This is a striking contrast to the pre-convention period, when Obama enjoyed nearly 50% more coverage. 

Well, at least they evened out the amount of coverage, right?

*****Update: Previous headline and text changed a bit. In my flu-weakened condition, I transposed "times more" for "times as many." 

If there were 57 percent negative reports compared to 14 percent positive, this either means four times as many or three times more. Sorry for the confusion.