Mitt Romney raised a few eyebrows last week when he told Breitbart TV that he’s concerned about a “conspiracy” between journalists and the left that may derail his presidential campaign.
“There will be an effort by the quote ‘vast left-wing conspiracy’ to work together to put out their message and to attack me,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. He added, “Many in the media are inclined to do the president’s bidding.”
It was odd enough that Romney was chatting with Breitbart TV in the first place, but the reference to a “vast left-wing conspiracy” was even more peculiar.
Fox News found it persuasive, arguing the conspiracy exists, but if it does, the conspirators are wildly incompetent. Adam Serwer had this report today on the latest research from the Pew Research Center’s Excellence in Journalism Project
The Liberal Media has consistently given more positive coverage to likely Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney compared to President Barack Obama, according to a new survey of media coverage from the Pew Research Center’s Excellence in Journalism Project.
During the early weeks of 2012, Romney’s media coverage was slightly negative — between January 2 and February 26, 33 percent of the stories about the ex-Massachusetts governor were positive and 37 percent were negative, according to Pew’s analysis. But Romney has received mostly positive coverage since then (47 percent positive to 24 percent negative). By contrast, according to the report, President Barack Obama “did not have a single week in 2012 when positive coverage exceeded negative coverage.”
One could argue that the media’s tone on Obama was consistently negative for objective reasons — the state of the economy, for example, or Americans’ disagreement with the president’s foreign policy. But the negative coverage of Obama hasn’t been particularly substantive — only 18 percent of coverage of Obama has been on domestic issues, with two percent on foreign issues.
If major news organizations are working together in an elaborate “conspiracy” to “attack” Romney and “do the president’s bidding,” media professionals are really going to have to pick up their game. As things stand, Romney’s getting much more favorable press than the president, which suggests this is the most incompetent conspiracy ever or the Republican’s complaining about the campaign coverage is completely wrong.
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