WASHINGTON — President Bush has done a better job controlling his message in his first 100 days in office but “has not gotten an easier ride” than former President Clinton on TV screens and in major newspapers, a study of their news coverage concludes.
The study, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, concludes that overall Bush is “dramatically less visible” at the end of his 100th day in office than was Clinton eight years ago. Overall, there were 41 percent fewer stories about Bush on network television, the study said.
“As a whole the press has depicted Bush as a skillful manager, more comfortable as an insider than a man of the people, who is stubbornly pursuing a sincere, conservative ideological agenda even if it is controversial,” the study concluded.
“By contrast, a much larger percentage of the coverage of Clinton depicted him as a politician of the people whose actions and policies were often highly calculated but also more popular.”
During the entire period, Clinton and Bush saw the same portion of clearly negative stories — 28 percent. Clinton received more clearly positive stories — 28 percent — during his first 100 days than did Bush, at 22 percent.
“Contrary to Democratic complaints, George W. Bush has not gotten an easier ride from the American media in his first 100 days than Bill Clinton did in his famously rocky start,” the study concludes.
It didn’t start out that way.
“Bush had a far better first month than Clinton,” the study said, with positive stories outweighing negative 27 percent to 23 percent. Clinton’s press coverage for his first month in office ran 32 percent negative to 22 percent positive,” it said.
It noted that Clinton was hit in his first days in office with highly negative accounts of miscues regarding policy on gays in the military and a series of badly handled high-level appointments.
The study said coverage of Bush turned more critical in his second month as attention turned from his ability to handle the job to his ideological and policy agenda. Critical stories outnumbered positive accounts, 36 percent to 17 percent in this period, the study said.
The study was based on a study of 899 news articles and television broadcasts at four network television news stations, two major newspapers and one news magazine.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
