Study: Trump Benefited From ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ Tone Of Election News Coverage

From Forbes.com:

Depending on who you believe, Donald Trump won the election because of Russian hackers, last-minute FBI announcements, fake news, or because Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. A new study from the Harvard Kennedy School pins the blame on the news media—specifically the “overwhelmingly negative” tone of news coverage and the “extremely light” coverage of policy issues.

The study, from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, examined print editions of the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today, the main newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as CNN’s The Situation Room and Fox’s Special Report.

The report should be required reading for political journalists trying to understand Trump’s victory. The study found that 62% of the coverage of Clinton and 56% of the coverage of Trump was negative in tone. These numbers actually overstate the amount of positive press the candidates received. Most of the “positive” stories here were about new poll numbers. Each one of these horse race stories was “good press” for one candidate and “bad press” for the other.

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