Romney's Press Coverage More Positive Than Obama's In The Past Year, Study Shows

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Accusations of media bias have run rampant for so long now, particularly with many conservatives alleging that media coverage leans left and, in this campaign, favors President Obama over his opponent Mitt Romney. The folks over at Pew took a look at the positive and negative press coverage of Obama and the Republican candidates over the past year. While the study states the research is not to confirm or deny bias, it does provide an interesting look.

Below is the trend in Romney's media coverage. The solid line represents 'positive' stories, while the dotted line represents 'negative' stories. Over at The Atlantic, James Fallows notes that 'positive' for Romney generally means stories about his business record and primary race successes, while negative refers to campaign gaffes and Bain-related layoffs. You'll see that throughout a large portion of 2011, Romney had more negative than positive press ' but since about March (or, roughly the end of the intense primary battle), the positive outweighed the negative.

And here's Obama's. He's had more negative than positive coverage throughout 2011.

The Romney and Obama charts combined. Obama's positive coverage never reached the point of Romney's positive coverage in the past year ' and it looks like Romney's highest point of negative coverage was still lower than Obama's.

Fallows notes the negative coverage of the Obama administration is arguably justified; as an incumbent, he should be held to a higher standard. But, he writes, 'you can't sanely argue that the press is in the tank for Obama.' Of course, people draw varying conclusions from charts, attributing the numbers to a wide arrays of factors.

(H/T Atlantic)

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•  The media is corrupt.

• Wow. The so-called 'liberal media' sucks at being in the tank for Obama.

• I can't wait to hear 'liberalmediasux''s take on this study.

• But.. But.. But' Politico said'

  Seriously though, I wonder how much of this is a primary vs. general situation' Romney's coverage (good and bad) would have been diffused amongst the other primary candidates, no? What kind of effect does that normally have, if any?

• Ok, hear it is.  The are calling telling people the awful truth of the state of things negative coverage of Obama.   So the truth is negative for Barry.   They ARE bias in the  stories they choose to cover.  You can keep denying there is a bias, but it won't make it true. 

  ps, it's nice to know you think of me when I'm not here.  I'm flattered. 

• This is to make barry worry that if he doesn't 'get on the stick' and do the ASSIGNED AGENDA of the Elite soon, they'll replace him with ANOTHER PUPPET!