Reality Check: Is Most Media Coverage Of Trump Negative?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Wednesday is the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's unexpected election victory.
It has been a tumultuous year marked by a bitter war with the media amid complaints that he's not getting positive coverage.
Is he right? A new study says yes.
It is an exhaustive study of Trump's early days in office by the Pew Research Center, which found that media coverage was more negative than the presidents who preceded him.
Pew found 62 percent of stories about President Trump were negative during his first 60 days.
That is compared to 28 percent for Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and only 20 percent for President Barack Obama.
The study measured negative statements in stories compared to positive ones during a protest-filled January to March of 2017.
It is a time period in which President Trump tried to impose a Muslim-country travel ban.
His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned amid a widening Russian investigation.
And the Republican Congress failed to repeal Obamacare.
Pew reports most of the 3,000 stories that it studied focused on Trump's personality.
Sixty-nine percent were about his leadership and character, while 31 percent were about policy.
The study does not enumerate reasons the media coverage might be negative, although it notes that many of the stories are generated by the president's provocative words in person and on Twitter.
The president at one point called the American press "the enemy of the people," and any negative story about him "fake news."
Now, a year after the election, a Politico/Morning Consult Poll finds 46 percent of Americans believe the media make up stories about him.
That is even though fact checkers say the president's statements are often factually untrue.
A running Pinocchio test in the Washington Post shows that in his first 263 days in office, the president made 1,318 provable false statements.
That's five false statements every day.
Here Are Some Of The Sources We Used For This Reality Check:
