Study: Media Coverage Overwhelmingly Negative For Both Sides - Spokane, North Idaho News & Weather KHQ.com

YAHOO.COM - Supporters of President Obama or Mitt Romney who complain that the media is hard on their candidate are correct, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Both Obama and Romney received overwhelmingly negative treatment in the press over the general election, according to Pew. From Aug. 27 to Oct. 21, a period that encompassed both conventions and three out of four debates, just 19 percent of stories about Obama were "favorable" in tone versus 30 percent that were "unfavorable. For Romney the ratio was 15 percent favorable to 38 percent unfavorable.

The gap between those numbers is largely accounted for by Obama's relative frontrunner status for much of the observed period. For stories that didn't concern the horse race aspect of the campaign, the two received near identical (if still negative) coverage: 15 percent positive to 32 percent negative for Obama vs. 14 percent positive and 32 percent negative for Romney. click here to read more