Bad press? Sometimes Donald Trump asks for it

Have you heard about the new Harvard University study that alleges liberal media bias? It's a big story, especially in media that have a conservative bias.

"About the only people who deny widespread media bias these days are the people who are directly benefiting from it," said the conservative star of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," reacting to the study on the conservative Fox News network. "And that would include progressive activists posing as reporters and the Democratic politicians whose water they carry."

Attaboy, Tucker. Keep tossing out those blanket smears of working journalists and you, too, might become as popular as Bill O'Reilly, whose show you are replacing.

However, regardless of your political orientation, there's nothing special about bashing media. (Which, by the way, is a plural noun, folks. Please stop saying "The media is...." Just stop it.) Everybody hates the media, including those of us who work in them.

That's why I welcome useful research into what we do and how we might do it better. But I don't welcome trolls who, in pursuit of a chance to say, "I told you so," twist research conclusions to back their own partisan position, whatever it may be.

In that light, the new study of media coverage of President Donald Trump's first 100 days by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School is useful for what it really says about media bias: It transcends politics.

Conservatives predictably applauded the study's finding that, of news stories about the new president that could be categorized as positive or negative, 80 percent were classified as negative for their tone.

Among recent presidents, that beats the previous record of 60 percent negative press set by President Bill Clinton's coverage during his first 100 days. That was only slightly ahead of George W. Bush's 57 percent and way ahead of Barack Obama's 41 percent.

But look at what we're talking about. The study doesn't measure partisanship. It measures negativity -- in other words, bad news vs. good news.

At least President Trump can't complain that he is being ignored. He dominated media coverage. He was the topic of 41 percent of all news stories in the media that were analyzed. That's three times the amount of coverage received by the previous three presidents.

And most of it was bad news, even as it provided an overflow of material for late night comedians. That's not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. How do you put a positive spin on a presidency that launches itself with a presidential hissy-fit over the size of his inauguration crowd?

In fact, if anyone should be upset over being shut out by media bias, it is Democrats. Republican voices accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, the study found, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats. That's the price of losing control of the White House and both houses of Congress, I guess.

Trump was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage. That's because he is not only the president but also Donald Trump, a celebrity Twitter troll who became president, a man more savvy about media than about politics or policies. You couldn't make up a better sit-com premise than that.

Plus, his narrative offers the extra spice of knowing that he has the nuclear codes. Fun.

Trump has received maximum coverage for most weeks of his presidency without a single major topic where his coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, the study said, "setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president."

But did he deserve it? Considering the ways in which Trump effectively turned his "war" with the media into a major campaign rallying cry, he's turned the media bias charge from a liability into an asset.

Yet if there's anything on which both sides should agree, it is the Harvard study's suggestion that journalists "spend less time peering at the White House" and "more time in places where policy intersects with people's lives." Then we might stand better chance of spotting important stories like the discontent that led to Trump's new job --and may yet determine how long he keeps it.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)