The Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy did a study of political coverage and found that when one excludes the outliers, the coverage of the Presidential candidates was "fair and balanced." Here are the main conclusions about this issue:
Overall, Democrats also have received more positive coverage than Republicans (35% of stories vs. 26%), while Republicans received more negative coverage than Democrats (35% vs. 26%). For both parties, a plurality of stories, 39%, were neutral or balanced.
Most of that difference in tone, however, can be attributed to the friendly coverage of Obama (47% positive) and the critical coverage of McCain (just 12% positive.) When those two candidates are removed from the field, the tone of coverage for the two parties is virtually identical.
Talk radio is a completely different story:
Ever since Clinton’s January announcement that she intended to follow in her husband’s footsteps, she has been a prime subject on talk radio and a prime target of conservative talkers. PEJ’s recent report on election coverage in the first five months of 2007 found that Clinton generated almost three times as many segments on conservative talk radio as any other candidate. And 86% of those segments about her were negative in tone. But she didn’t fare well on the liberal talk radio either, where she was a far less frequent topic of discussion, but where negative segments about her outnumbered positive ones by two-to-one.
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