Study: Media narrow presidential field

WASHINGTON (AP) — When it comes to presidential politics, the news media love front-runners.

And seem to hate them, too.

Within the first five months of the presidential contest, the media effectively had reduced the field to five candidates, even though there were 17 mainstream Democrats and Republicans, a study of political coverage found.

But the tone of the coverage for the top two front-runners — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani — hardly was friendly. Nearly four out of 10 stories were negative, more than three out of 10 were neutral and only the rest were positive.

The study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, to be released today, also portrays the political press as out of touch with the citizens. Among the findings:

UStories focused more on fundraising and polls than on where candidates stood on the issues, despite a public demand for more attention to the policies, views and records of the candidates.

UThe public’s attention to campaign news is higher now than it was at similar points in the past two elections, but that interest is only shared by less than one in four people.

UFive candidates — Democrats Clinton and Barack Obama and Republicans Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain — received more than half the coverage. Elizabeth Edwards, the cancer-stricken wife of Democrat John Edwards, received almost as much attention as her husband.

UDemocrats, overall, got more coverage — and more positive ink and airtime — than Republicans.

UObama enjoyed the friendliest coverage of the presidential field; McCain endured the most negative.