Final Weeks in the Mainstream Press
November 19, 2012
Throughout most of the general campaign period, President Obama received slightly better coverage in the mainstream press than Governor Romney did. An earlier PEJ report showed that from August 27 to October 21, 19% of stories about Obama were clearly favorable in tone while 30% were unfavorable and 51% were mixed. For Romney, 15% of the stories were favorable, while 38% were unfavorable and 47% were mixed-a differential toward negative stories of 23 points.
However,
most of the difference during that period could be accounted for by the horse-race stories, which generally showed Obama with small leads in important state and national polls. If those horse-race stories were removed from the sample, the coverage of the two candidates became quite similar-15% of the remaining campaign stories about Obama were positive, 32% were negative and 53% were mixed. For Romney it was 14% positive, 32% negative and 55% mixed.
The next week included the third and final debate, which most polls indicated Obama had won. Obama, however, did not see an improvement in his media coverage. The week of the final debate, October 22 to 28, Obama's coverage was 16% positive and 30% negative while Romney's was 18% positive and 32% negative-about on par with the week prior.
Then, in the final week (October 29 to November 5), a noticeable change occurred: Obama's coverage improved dramatically while Romney's coverage stayed about the same but shrank in volume.