Study: During Final Week of Campaign, MSNBC Provided Zero Negative Coverage of Obama & No Positive Coverage of Romney

A new study released by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) found that the Obama-friendly "news" network MSNBC ran zero negative stories about President Barack Obama in the final week of the 2012 presidential campaign. Additionally, the network also failed to provide any positive coverage of Mitt Romney during the same time period.

The Pew study also found that MSNBC's coverage of Romney was much more negative than the mainstream media in general. The network's coverage of Romney was reportedly 68 percent negative with no positive stories in the sample.

What kind of treatment did Obama get? Well, according to the study, the president enjoyed positive stories 51 percent of the time with no negative stories whatsoever in the final week of the campaign. To put that into perspective, MSNBC's reporting was 33 percent positive and 13 percent negative for Obama from Oct. 1 to 28 this year.

Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism

Fox News didn't get off the hook for slanting their coverage in the last week of the presidential campaign either, though it wasn't as pronounced as MSNBC. Per the PEJ report:

That week, when the media overall were more positive about Obama than negative, Fox News went a different direction and became more negative about him. From October 1 to 28, 4% of Obama's stories were positive and 47% were negative (a difference of 43 points). In the final week, however, that tenor changed so that 5% of Obama's stories were positive while 56% were negative-a difference of 51 points.

At the same time, when Romney was receiving negative coverage in the final week from the rest of the press, Fox was different; 42% of its segments about him were positive while only 11% were negative. This was more positive than the earlier part of October when 34% of Fox News' Romney coverage was positive and 9% negative.

To read the entire study, click here.

(H/T: Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard)