Sanders Received Most Favorable Media Coverage

A new study from the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government found that Sen. Bernie Sanders received the most “overwhelmingly positive” media coverage of any presidential candidate.

“The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her ‘bad news’ outpaced her ‘good news,’ usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015.”

The study also confirmed “the me­dia’s ex­cess­ive and of­ten un­crit­ic­al cov­er­age of Don­ald Trump in the run-up to the primar­ies played a ma­jor role in his ex­plos­ive polit­ic­al rise.”