Shocker: Media Is Kind To Obama/Hillary, Unkind To McCain

You’re stunned, I’m sure.

If campaigns for president are in part a battle for control of the master narrative about character, Democrat Barack Obama has not enjoyed a better ride in the press than rival Hillary Clinton, according to a new study of primary coverage by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
From January 1, just before the Iowa caucuses, through March 9, following the Texas and Ohio contests, the height of the primary season, the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns. …
On the Republican side, John McCain, the candidate who quickly clinched his party’s nomination, has had a harder time controlling his message in the press. Fully 57% of the narratives studied about him were critical in nature, though a look back through 2007 reveals the storyline about the Republican nominee has steadily improved with time.

I like how the spin here from Pew, who did the study, is that McCain had trouble “controlling his message in the press.” The problem isn’t that McCain and his people weren’t deft enough to handle the media (an idea alarming enough in its own right) but rather that the press doesn’t like McCain.
Because he’s a Republican, and ostensibly a “conservative” on some issues. They do, however, like Hillary and Obama. Because while the two may have differences, they’re both liberals in good standing and thus good people as far as the press corps is concerned.