President Donald Trump and his supporters frequently insist they are targets of negative media coverage, and now a report from the Pew Research Center proves it.
As the Washington Examiner reports, the study shows that the Trump presidency has had to endure three times as much negative news reporting as former president Barack Obama did in his first year of office. Trump’s negative rating is twice that of the two other recent predescessors in the office, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Pew demonstrates that early media reports on Trump were 62 percent negative, as compared to the 20 percent that Obama received.
The findings were included in a Pew report entitled “17 Striking Findings from 2017” and include details from Trump’s initial two months in office — when just five percent of national media reports could be described as “positive” while Obama enjoyed positive press 42 percent of the time.
“About six-in-ten stories on Trump’s early days in office had a negative assessment, about three times more than in early coverage for Obama and roughly twice that of Bush and Clinton. Coverage of Trump’s early time in office moved further away from a focus on the policy agenda and more toward character and leadership,” the report states.