July 20, 2004
Media Favors Kerry While Republicans Attack
This report shows the sources of criticism in the media coverage of Bush and Kerry and, more important, the clear differences between the strategies of Republicans and Democrats.
Both major party U.S. presidential candidates received nearly equal criticism from the public in major print and broadcast media during the second quarter of the election year. The latest report by Media Tenor, an independent media analyses institute, shows that approximately ten percent of the media's negative statements about both George W. Bush and John F. Kerry were made by voters.
Media Tenor analysis of the negative statements about Bush and Kerry in leading US media from January to June 2004, found that in the first second journalists accounted for 46.4% of the negative statements on Bush and 37.1% of the statements on Kerry. Members of the public without a specific political affiliation accounted for 10.2% of the negative statements on Bush and 9.7% of the negative statements on Kerry. Kerry also received significant negative numbers from Republicans who were responsible for 24.7% of the negative media coverage. By contrast, only 6.4% of negative statements on Bush came from Democrats, which may speak to a difference in the campaign strategy and style of the two parties.
This is a shift from the first quarter, where journalists were more critical of Kerry, issuing 42.7% of the negative statements on his candidacy. The data also shows that Kerry attacked more in the first quarter and was responsible for 11.2% of negative statements about Bush. This was significantly less, however, than the 43.3% of negative statements on Bush that were attributed to journalists.
The complete report with graphics can be downloaded at http://www.mediatenor.com/US_Elec_041602.htm
Media Tenor, a non-partisan organization, performs media analysis of U.S. presidential election coverage. Analyzed media (for this report) include ABC, NBC and CBS networks, Time and Newsweek magazines and Wall Street Journal and USA Today dailies. The results are published in an ongoing series of weekly reports. For more information please visit Media Tenor's website at: www.mediatenor.com
Posted by Isadora Badi at July 20, 2004 02:47 PMIsadora:
What constitutes a “negative” statement in the MediaTenor report? How is it defined?
Posted by: joebagodonuts at July 20, 2004 04:34 PMThe overall ratings (positive/neutral/negative) are determined by the content of the text and words used by the journalist (our source of information, like the person who was interviewed) in the article - according to very strict criteria that don’t allow the analyst to infuse personal opinions or judgment into the analysis.
The ratings are derived from the combination of context (when the content is embedded in positive or negative context) and explicit ratings (when the journalist or source uses or cites words of clearly positive or negative judgment).
For more information, you can also check:
http://www.mediatenor.com/methodr.html and http://www.mediatenor.com/aboutMT.pdf
Well, since attack is Bush’s middle name, Kerry has a real chance in November. Too bad the animation of Kerry and Bush travelling the internet today was not included, both sides could have chalked in big points for hostile levity.
Posted by: David R. Remer at July 20, 2004 09:04 PMAll that’s left now is for the NY Times to say “bring out the gimp”.
Yes, it’s an obscure pop-culture reference. Brochures to decode it are available at the back of the tour bus.
It’s not a tour bus it’s a chopper baby…
Posted by: Bob Hope at July 21, 2004 07:18 AM
