Here is the highlight:
During his first 50 days in office, the three broadcast network evening news shows devoted 1021 stories lasting 27 hours 44 minutes to Barack Obama’s presidency. The daily average of seven stories and over 11 minutes of airtime represents about half of the entire newscasts. By contrast, at this point in their presidencies George W. Bush had received 7 hours 42 minutes and Bill Clinton garnered 15 hours 2 minutes of coverage, for a combined total airtime five hours less than Mr. Obama’s.
Yeah. We knew that.
Mr. Obama has received not only more press but also better press than his immediate predecessors. On the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news, fifty-eight percent of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, and 42 percent were unfavorable. CMPA’s previous studies of network news found that George W. Bush received only 33 percent positive evaluations by sources and reporters during the first 50 days of his administration in 2001, and Bill Clinton received only 44 percent positive evaluations during his first ten weeks (70 days) in office in 1993.
I wonder if that type of coverage has any effect on his favorability ratings?
Here's a chart of Bill Clinton's favorability ratings over time.
Clinton's favorability rating dragged down to 45 percent by May 10th... a little over his first 100 days in office. Which eerily parallels his media coverage in the first 70 days.
That made me curious as to how Bush's favorabilty ratings were after 80 or so days. The theorey being that favorability ratings would lag behind coverage. I wondered if Bush's approval rating seemed to be as affected by the media coverage. But that doesn't seem to be the case. His approval rating hovered around 53 percent on May 7th. So yeah. Thus another neat theory bites the dust due to actual facts and statistics.
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