Commentary favored Kerry, group says

Commentary on major television and cable-news networks after the three presidential debates portrayed John Kerry in a slightly more positive light than President Bush, according to an independent news media study group.

The Media Tenor Institute for Media Analysis found that post-debate comments on ABC, NBC CBS, FOX and PBS portrayed Mr. Kerry more positively after the first two debates. CNN, which favored Mr. Bush slightly after the first debate, leaned toward Mr. Kerry after the second.

ABC and NBC had more moderate ratings of the candidates after the third debate. Fox, CNN and PBS strongly favored Mr. Bush, while CBS leaned toward Mr. Kerry.

Media Tenor, a nonpartisan organization with offices in New York, London, Germany, Czech Republic and South Africa, invented a “slant-o-meter” to reach its conclusions, examining what appeared on the networks during the 30 minutes immediately following each debate.

The slant-o-meter looked at a total of 4,219 statements made by journalists, voters and experts appearing on the stations. It also took into account sections of the debates the networks chose to replay and how those sections were used to show a good or bad job done by either candidate.

Media Tenor founder Roland Schatz, meanwhile, criticized the television networks for putting too much energy into trying to declare a winner of each debate rather than focusing on differences between what each candidate said.

Such newspapers as the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune reported each debate as a draw, he said, while the networks attempted to spin opinion in favor of one candidate mainly by citing results of their own ad-hoc polls.

“All the networks base their spin on questionable polls,” Mr. Schatz said, adding that post-debate television coverage essentially tried to reduce the debates to “a sporting event.”

Any poll using fewer than 1,000 participants is questionable, he said.

Over the course of the three debates, Media Tenor found that Fox presented the most balanced portrayal of each candidate’s performance. The network portrayed both candidates negatively after the first two debates, with Mr. Kerry getting a slightly less-negative commentary in both.

After the third debate, Fox went in the other direction, delivering positive reports on Mr. Bush that exceeded negative reports by 43 percent, according to Media Tenor.

CBS and NBC were the only networks to favor Mr. Kerry in all three debates, the group said.

The third debate was the first time Mr. Bush was able to “convince the pundits and experts” to deliver an overall commentary immediately after the debate that was “slightly more in favor of the president than of Kerry,” Media Tenor said.