A recognized non partisan organization that researches the media published a report about the way the press has covered the presidential candidates. The results of this report will no doubt surprise some people.

At one time in our country, the media's job was to report the news without any bias or opinion. We have moved away from these tenets as the age of activism now infects all aspects of the media. Reporters are no longer content to give us the news, they now have to give us their opinion of the news. The media now decides which facts to give the public and coincidentally, these are the facts that support their world view and opinion.  

As those in the media have portrayed, this presidential election is historic in nature. Some of the candidates have made claims of media bias while the media denies these charges. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism is a research organization that specializes in using empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press.

Here are highlights from three of the media areas (Cable News, Network News and Newspapers):

• MSNBC stood out for having less negative coverage of Obama than the press generally (14% of stories vs. 29% in the press overall) and for having more negative stories about McCain (73% of its coverage vs. 57% in the press overall).
• On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm (40% of stories vs. 29% overall) and less positive (25% of stories vs. 36% generally). For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive (22% vs. 14% in the press overall) and substantially less negative (40% vs. 57% in the press overall). Yet even here, his negative stories outweighed positive ones by almost 2 to 1.
• CNN fell distinctly in the middle of the three cable channels when it came to tone. In general, the tone of its coverage was closer than any other cable news channel to the press overall, though also somewhat more negative than the media overall.
• The distinct tone of MSNBC—more positive toward Democrats and more negative toward Republicans—was not reflected in the coverage of its broadcast sibling, NBC News. Even though it has correspondents appear on their cable shows and even anchor some programs on there, the broadcast channel showed no such ideological tilt. Indeed, NBC’s coverage of Palin was the most positive of any TV organization studied, including Fox News.
• The same was true for Sarah Palin. She received generally more negative coverage from morning network programs than evening newscasts. In the morning, 39% of Palin stories studied were negative, compared with 30% in the evening. Meanwhile, mornings were less likely to be neutral toward her (30% compared with 47% at night). The only break from this pattern was that morning shows were also more likely to run positive stories about Palin (32% in the morning vs. 23% at night). In all this, the morning shows resembled the media overall (28% positive, 39% negative, 33% neutral).
• At night, the newscasts of the three traditional broadcast networks stood out for being more neutral—and also less negative—than most other news outlets. The morning shows of the networks, by contrast, more closely resembled the media generally in tone. That might surprise some who imagined those morning programs were somehow easier on political figures. Overall, 44% of the morning show stories were clearly negative, compared with 34% on the nightly news and 42% in the press overall.
• Indeed, of all the media sectors studied, John McCain received the most negative coverage in print. In all, 69% of the newspaper stories studied about McCain were clearly negative, while only 6% were positive, a ratio of about 11-to-1. (The press overall was 57% to 14%, a ratio of closer to 4-to-1.)

• Fully 76% of the stories where McCain was a significant presence were focused on the horserace aspect of the campaign, and of those, only 5% were positive while 73% were negative. Similarly, Obama fared better in the newspaper horserace stories than he did in newspaper stories overall. More than half of the horse race stories (53%) about Obama were positive, which was higher than the 45% of positive coverage he received in all newspaper stories and the 36% positive coverage he received in all media.

Conclusion
We hope that one of the things that come out of this election is that the media can no longer claim they are not bias or partisan. The numbers and facts speak for themselves in this case. We at the NGIA will continue to report the facts to you with our analysis which our expert opinion and is labeled as the conclusion. We do not hide our opinions in an article and claim that it is fact. Please pass this story to a friend so we can take back our media.