Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Rimrock Auto Arena, in Billings, Mont., Thursday, May 26. | AP Photo Study: Trump boosted, Clinton hurt by primary media coverage

Though he regularly bashes the media as dishonest, scum and the “absolute worst,” Donald Trump disproportionately benefited from the Fourth Estate’s coverage over the past year of the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, drew the most negative coverage of any other candidate as she engaged in a longer than expected battle against Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for more than a year.

That’s according to a report from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy out this week, showing that the reality TV star turned presumptive Republican nominee made up for his slow start in the polls with a boost from positive media coverage. The report analyzed coverage from eight traditional print and broadcast outlets, including CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.


“Journalists seemed unmindful that they and not the electorate were Trump’s first audience. Trump exploited their lust for riveting stories,” the report found. “He didn’t have any other option. He had no constituency base and no claim to presidential credentials. If Trump had possessed them, his strategy could have been political suicide, which is what the press predicted as they showcased his tirades. Trump couldn’t compete with the likes of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or Jeb Bush on the basis of his political standing or following. The politics of outrage was his edge, and the press became his dependable if unwitting ally.”

Based on the eight outlets studied, the ad-equivalent value of Trump's media coverage was worth approximately $55 million. The next closest candidate, Jeb Bush, trailed by $19 million, with an ad-equivalent value of coverage totaling around $36 million. As far as the media’s claims that it has been covering Trump in “watchdog” mode, the study appears to discount that notion. The majority of Trump coverage was positive or neutral in all outlets studied, ranging from 63 percent by The New York Times to 74 percent by USA Today.

As far as what brought Trump the most coverage, the study found that 34 percent of coverage related to the candidate’s events and other activities, 27 percent related to “other,” 21 percent had to do with polls, while just 12 percent of the coverage dealt with issues and ideology and 6 percent covered his personal qualities.

Trump received, by far, the most coverage out of any of his Republican primary rivals, earning 34 percent to 18 percent for Jeb Bush, who entered the race in June 2015 as the ostensibly prohibitive favorite for the nomination. Ben Carson and Marco Rubio each received 14 percent, while Ted Cruz, despite running the earliest campaign, earned 13 percent. And while he was technically the last man standing against Trump, John Kasich drew just 7 percent of media attention.

“No candidate filled the ‘losing ground’ storyline more snugly than did Jeb Bush,” the study found. “Early in 2015, he had a large lead in the polls and enjoyed corresponding favorable coverage. As his support declined, however, so did the tone of his coverage.”

The Democratic side of the race received significantly less attention from the media, particularly during the early phase of the campaign in which Clinton jumped out to large polling leads over the likes of Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee. In terms of “good news” vs. “bad news,” Sanders was the beneficiary of the most favorable coverage during what the report calls “the invisible primary.”

Just as media coverage boosted Trump in the polls, it slowly ate away at Clinton’s advantage. Among Clinton, Trump, Sanders and Cruz, the former secretary of state earned the highest percentage of coverage related to issues — a relatively small 28 percent, while just 12 percent of Trump coverage related to issues. For Cruz, just 9 percent of coverage related to the issues, while 7 percent of coverage was issue-related for Sanders. But in issue-related coverage of Clinton, an overwhelming 84 percent was negative in tone, the study found, compared with 43 percent for Trump, 32 percent for Cruz and just 17 percent for Sanders.