PEJ: Romney's Positive Media Coverage Climbs

GOP Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney emerged from Super Tuesday not only with six of 10 wins, but with momentum in the national media narrative.

He had the least negative coverage and the most positive coverage in the national news media for the week of March 5-11, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's latest Election Report, based on its tracking of major national media outlets in TV, radio, print and online.

For that week, 58% of Romney's coverage was positive, to only 16% negative, a difference of 42 percentage points, his biggest differential to date, while for number two candidate Rick Santorum, it was an even 32% split positive and negative.

Only three weeks before, after Santorum had won in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, his positives outweighed his negatives by 25 percentage points, while Romney's negatives were 28 points higher than his positives.

Romney also had the most coverage as a "significant presence" in 64% of the stories, vs. 44% for Santorum ("significant presence" means at least 25% of the story).

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.