Pew analiza la cobertura mediática de las elecciones

Journalism.com:

Despite his recent stumbles, Rick Perry received the most flattering coverage of any candidate over the five months studied. Positive coverage about his candidacy in the news media outweighed negative 32% to 20% (the remaining assessments were neutral). His coverage began to be less positive the week of September 12-18, before his Florida debate performance. But Perry endured only one week in which coverage was more negative than positive overall, October 3-9. And while he did not enter the race until August, he has received more coverage than any other candidate during the five months studied.

The tone of coverage of Mitt Romney, by contrast, has been mixed—26% positive and 27% negative—numbers that are less positive than those for Perry, Cain, Michele Bachmann or non-candidate Sarah Palin. Yet what stands out most is consistency. While other major candidates have risen and fallen in the amount and tone of coverage received, the basic arc of Romney’s narrative has wavered little from week to week from May to early October.

Overall, news coverage of Herman Cain has been moderately more positive (28%) than negative (23%). But most of that flattering narrative has come recently—the result of eight straight weeks when positive assessments of his candidacy outweighed negative. The first two weeks of October have been particularly positive. From May through July, however, Cain was largely ignored, and his coverage was more negative or mixed.

(...) As for Barack Obama, 9% of the news coverage about him over the last five months has registered as positive while 34% has been negative and 57% has been neutral or largely straight news accounting of events. In each of the 23 weeks studied, his negative coverage exceeded his positive coverage by more than 20 percentage points. And in none of those weeks did his negative coverage fall below 30%. The tone of Obama’s coverage on blogs, while still overwhelmingly negative, was slightly better—14% positive and 36% negative.

The study examined four basic elements of each candidate’s narrative. It measured how much attention each candidate received in news media. It also examined the tone of that coverage. Then, separately, it assessed the amount of attention and tone in blogs.