The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism has a lengthy and interesting analysis of the “master character narratives” that have appeared in the media for President Obama and Gov. Romney during the campaign:
An examination of the dominant or master narratives in the press about the character and record of presidential contenders finds that 72% of this coverage has been negative for Barack Obama and 71% has been negative for Mitt Romney. The study, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, examined the personal portrayal of the candidate in 50 major news outlets over a 10-week period.
These numbers make this as negative a campaign as PEJ has seen since it began monitoring the master narratives about candidates in press coverage in presidential campaigns in 2000. Only one campaign has been comparable-2004 when coverage was filled with the controversy over the war in Iraq, the prison scandal at Abu Ghraib and the Swift Boat documentaries. That year, 70% of the personal narrative studied about Democrat John Kerry and 75% of that about incumbent George Bush was negative, numbers similar to now.
That’s an intriguing interpretation but I’m not sure it’s one that actually comports with the facts. Let me provide an alternative.
The media narrative, emphasizing the “horse race” aspect of campaigns and cognizant of the advantages of incumbency, is always harder on the incumbent. Otherwise there would be no “horse race”. That explains the present negative master character narratives, the strongly negative narratives during the 2004 campaigns, and the notably negative treatment that Al Gore received in 2000. He was being treated as incumbent, a commonplace among “third term” candidates.
While Pew repeatedly remarks on how journalists have lost control of the emerging narratives, I think the more interesting finding is how easy the media went on candidate Barack Obama in 2008 (31% negative character narratives then compared to 72% now and 57% for McCain then). That the character narratives for both the president and Gov. Romney are so negative despite the obvious preference of professional journalists for the president must be very disconcerting to the Obama Campaign.
These numbers make this as negative a campaign as PEJ has seen since it began monitoring the master narratives about candidates in press coverage in presidential campaigns in 2000.
Wow, the most negative out of FOUR campaigns! Astounding!
What I found interesting was that only 1% of the sources for campaign narratives have been Super PACS.
Al Gore is a twit. Lets’s settle this now. His fair distant cousin and my favorite littLe girl, Liza,is on my register.
However, Al do know how to make money.