62 Percent of Trump Media Coverage Was Negative

According to the Pew Research Center, that’s far more negative than the coverage of any other recent president. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, 28 percent of the coverage was negative. For George W. Bush, the share of negative stories was identical. For both men, there was a rough balance of negative and positive stories, with nearly half being neutral.

Barack Obama is the only recent president to receive overwhelmingly positive media coverage. Pew reports that 42 percent of the early stories concerning his administration were positive and just 20 percent were negative.

Pew also noted a shift in the topics covered. Sixty-nine percent of Trump’s coverage was about leadership and character rather than ideology. For Obama, coverage was evenly divided between those topics. For Clinton and Bush, the focus was primarily on ideology. 

Pew listed this as one of the 17 most striking findings of 2017.^[2]

Footnotes:

1.  Pew Research Center, "Covering President Trump in a Polarized Media Environment," October 2, 2017
2. Pew Research Center, "17 striking findings from 2017," December 26, 2017

Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.