STUDY REVEALS TRUMP HAS SUFFERED THE MOST UNFAVORABLE PRESS COVERAGE OF ANY PRESIDENT ON RECORD

A Harvard study found that 80 percent of Trump coverage was negative during his first 100 days in office, with the tone of the coverage being exceptionally antagonistic

By Sally Persons

The Washington Times
May 18, 2017

President Trump has suffered the most unfavorable press coverage of any president on record, according to a report from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard.

Mr. Trump has dominated the news since taking office, with 41 percent of all stories reviewed by the center focusing on the new president. That’s three times more than the average of previous presidents.

But the tone of the coverage was exceptionally antagonistic.

“Negative reports outpaced positive ones by 80 percent to 20 percent. Trump’s coverage was unsparing. In no week did the coverage drop below 70 percent negative and it reached 90 percent negative at its peak,” the analysts said in their new report, released Thursday.

The numbers could be seen to back up Mr. Trump’s claim this week that he’s suffered “unfairly.”

“Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media. No politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly,” the president said in an address to graduates at the Coast Guard Academy.

The Shorenstein study looked at coverage from ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN and Fox News as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. It also included the Financial Times, the BBC and ARD, Germany’s oldest public broadcast.

Since the 1960s, every president has dominated the news cycle, accounting for about an eighth of all news. But on national television, Mr. Trump accounted for 41 percent of coverage and was the main speaker in his news pieces two-thirds of the time. Another 11 percent of coverage was his administration staff, including his press secretary Sean Spicer.