David Zurawik
The Baltimore Sun
[…] ON MSNBC, the ratio of negative to positive stories on GOP candidate Mitt Romney was 71 to 3.
That’s not a news channel. That’s a propaganda machine, and owner Comcast should probably change Phil Griffin’s title from president to high minister of information, or something equally befitting the work of a party propaganist hack in a totalitarian regime. You wonder how mainstream news organizations allow their reporters and corrdespondents to appear in such a cauldron of bias.
I thought show host Sean Hannity of Fox News defined party propagandist. But while his channel was bad, it wasn’t as bad-boy biased as MSNBC.
The ratio of negative to positive stories in Fox’s coverage of President Obama was 46 to 6.
READ THE PEW STUDY ITSELF IN FULL HERE, OR PART OF IT BELOW:
Both Candidates Received More Negative than Positive Coverage in Mainstream News, but Social Media Was Even Harsher
From the conventions until the first debate, a period of improving polls for Obama, Romney suffered his period of the most negative coverage; just 4% of stories about him were positive while 52% were negative. Coverage of Obama during this period was fairly evenly split (20% positive vs. 24% negative). That narrative reversed sharply with the first debate. For the next two weeks, Romney saw the mixed treatment (23% positive vs. 23% negative) while Obama was caught in the critical loop, with 12% positive and 37% negative. After the second debate, coverage returned to its more general pattern, with an edge for Obama.
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