Trump’s early media coverage was three times more negative than Obama’s, study finds

Media coverage of President Donald Trump from his first weeks in office saw more negative and less positive evaluations by news outlets than past presidents.

A new study from the Pew Research Center found that in the first 60 days of the presidency, 5 percent of articles about Trump gave a “positive assessment,” while 62 percent gave a negative assessment.

That compares with 42 percent positive and 20 percent negative for Barack Obama’s first weeks in office in 2009.

Pew also compared the coverage of Bill Clinton (27 percent positive, 28 percent negative) and George W. Bush (22 percent and 28 percent).

Researchers selected sites with large audiences — 15 million or more unique viewers in early 2017, including five newspapers, four evening cable programs and four nightly news programs from broadcast TV, in addition to some radio outlets and other websites.

The study found a shift in the types of stories media pursue in covering administrations.

“Compared with the three prior presidencies, coverage of Trump’s early days in office moved further away from a focus on the policy agenda (31 percent of stories, compared with 50 percent for Obama, 65 percent for Bush and 58 percent for Clinton) and toward character and leadership,” the authors wrote.

Pew reported a number of other findings, including: The more sources a story had, the more likely it was to have a negative assessment of Trump and his administration; outlets with a right-leaning audience cited fewer source types, including experts, than outlets with mixed or left-leaning audiences; just five topics accounted for two-thirds of Trump’s coverage in his first 100 days (political skills, immigration, appointments and nominations, U.S.-Russia relations and health care); and outlets with a left-leaning audience were more likely to refute a statement made by Trump.

This story was originally published October 3, 2017 at 2:44 PM with the headline "Trump’s early media coverage was three times more negative than Obama’s, study finds."