Study: News companies
favor Kerry in October

In the battle over which candidate gets more favorable news coverage in the presidential race, it appears Democrat John Kerry is the easy winner.

A new study released by the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates President Bush suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than Kerry in the first two weeks of October.

In fact, the margin was about two to one, as more than half of all Bush stories studied were decidedly negative in tone, while only a quarter of all Kerry stories were clearly negative.

“This is the mirror image of what happened four years ago,” the report states, “when then-Gov. Bush benefited from coverage in the closing weeks, particularly from the debates, enjoying twice as many positive stories than his rival Vice President Gore. Indeed, the percentage of negative Bush coverage is almost identical to the level of negative Gore coverage four years ago.”

According to the final tally, 59 percent of stories about Bush were mainly negative, while Kerry totaled 25 percent. As far as positive stories are concerned, one in three went that way for Kerry, but only one in seven for the president.

A total of 817 stories were examined from newspapers and cable and broadcast television programs.

The papers were the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald and Columbus Dispatch of Ohio.

CNN and Fox News were the cable networks examined, and CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS had some of their programs analyzed.

The reports notes:

[T]he penchant of the press to focus on internal campaign matters like tactics, strategy, candidate performance and horse race, seem to be a major factor driving the tone of the coverage. This year the president was battered in the coverage particularly for his performance in the first two debates.

There is a difference this year from 2000, however. Kerry coverage has been markedly less negative – and somewhat more positive – than either candidate received during a similar phase in the 2000 race.