Country First - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

An October 29, 2007, study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that through the first five months of 2007, McCain had received the most unfavorable media coverage of any of the major 2008 presidential candidates, with 12 percent of the stories having a favorable tone towards him, 48 percent having an unfavorable tone, and with the balance neutral. In terms of amount of coverage, McCain was the subject of 7 percent of all stories, second-most among Republicans and fourth-most overall. McCain's negative coverage mostly included pessimistic "horse race" stories that focused on his campaign's slippage in national polls and fundraising difficulty; it also included his support for the then-unpopular Iraq troop surge. McCain's campaign went through its near-total collapse soon after the window of this study; the press subsequently focused on a "McCain is dead" story line through the summer, which it was slow to change away from.

By the time the 2008 primary season began, McCain's media coverage had shifted and he was now viewed as a "comeback" story. In addition, McCain returned to his long-standing practice of granting almost unlimited media access to him on this bus; this as well as the notion that he engages in "straight talk" free of political calculation gave him a positive personal sentiment in the press. Reflecting this feeling, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough joked of the media, "I think every last one of them would move to Massachusetts and marry John McCain if they could." Measurements by the University of Navarra indicated that throughout January 2008, McCain's global media attention surged from being a distant third among Republican candidates to being the equal of Romney and Huckabee.

In July 2008, the McCain campaign shifted to a much more restrictive attitude toward the press, virtually ending the former time for open-ended questions. McCain's press conferences became infrequent and, as one reporter stated, "He no longer ventures to the press section of his campaign plane to talk to reporters."