Chart of the Day: The Press Hates Barack Obama

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You’d hardly know it from listening to the endless complaints about the lamestream media from movement conservatives, but guess which presidential candidate has gotten the worst press coverage over the past five months? The Pew Research Center took a look at all the Republicans running for president, and the answer is: none of them.

One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all, the study found: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-1. Those assessments of the president have also been substantially more negative than positive every one of the 23 weeks studied. And in no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the president positive in tone.

The chart below tells the whole story. Anita Perry may think her husband has been “brutalized” over the past few weeks, but the numbers tell a different story. Rick Perry is actually the media’s golden boy.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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