The Associated Press reports that a study of nearly 2,200 stories on television, newspapers and Web sites found that most of them couldn't be categorized either negatively or positively.
Twenty-five percent of the stories were negative and twenty percent were positive, according to the study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism:
The three network evening newscasts tended to be more negative than positive, while the opposite was true of morning shows, the study said. Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, unlike the more evenhanded CNN and MSNBC, the study said.
I want to check the study's methodology, but I haven't been able to find the actual study. 2,200 sounded like a large sample until I remembered that back in January Arthur Chrenkoff posted an analysis of one day of the main stream media's coverage of Iraq. Cherenkoff's sample included over 11,000 stories. Wizbang's Kevin Aylward did the math and posted that Cherenkoff found 27 negative stories for every positive story. Just a slightly different result than the found by the Project for Excellence in Journalism study.
UPDATE: Right Pundit, also unable to locate the Project"s study, offers this criticism:
Thus, a study that simply counts stories in a vacuum tells us nothing about “balance” or “bias". Context is necessary and the Project’s study (at least as reported by AP) does not provide the necessary context.
Chrenkoff explains that it is the sheer quantity and spread of the coverage, rather than its tone that accounts for the common perception that nothing good is happening in Iraq.
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