Media coverage of the 2012 election was fair and balanced after all

[Commentary] A majority of Americans distrust the media. And these sentiments often reach fever pitch during a political campaign when the news media are accused of emphasizing trivia or being flat-out biased toward one candidate. In “The Gamble,” Lynn Vavreck’s and my new book on the 2012 presidential campaign, we have a lot to say about what, and how, the media did in covering the campaign. This is one unique feature about our book, compared to the campaign books written by journalists. We make the media a central character — an actor in the process, not just an observer. We do this with data on 11,000 different news outlets gathered by the company General Sentiment, which gauged not only how often the candidates were mentioned but how positive or negative that coverage was.

Here is what we found:

• In the Republican presidential primary, news coverage drove the candidates’ surges in the polls.
• In the primary, news coverage helped end these surges as well.
• In the general election campaign, it was the other way around: the polls drove the news.
• Overall, media coverage of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was actually fair and balanced. No, really.
• The news media are more prone to “root for the story” than “root for the candidate.”

[Sides is an Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.]