Pew: MSNBC more negative than Fox News (Plus lots of other interesting data).

[GameOver22]

Kasz216 said:

Yeah, I wish they would of taken out the "Horse race" data to see how much of that is due to the horse race effect and how much favorability is just effected by winning.  Maybe that's in the full report though.

From the data, it actually seems the non horse-race coverage is quite neutral in that neither Obama nor Romney gained a clear advantage in the coverage (August 27-October 21).

"Throughout the eight-week period studied, a good deal of the difference in treatment of the two contenders is related to who was perceived to be ahead in the race. When horse-race stories-those focused on strategy, tactics and the polls-are taken out of the analysis, and one looks at those framed around the candidates' policy ideas, biographies and records, the distinctions in the tone of media coverage between the two nominees vanish. With horse-race stories removed, 15% of campaign stories about Obama were positive, 32% were negative and 53% were mixed. For Romney it was 14% positive, 32% negative and 55% mixed."

As you said, it will be interesting to see the full report though. I was kind of wondering how they coded for positive/negative/mixed tone. There's almost always some disceprancy in these coding schemes (one coder says its positive while another says its negative).