Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism revealed that Republican presidential nominee John McCain is getting more negative media coverage than his Democratic rival, Barack Obama - more than half the stories on McCain have been negative, compared to slightly less than one-third for Obama.

For the six-week period, from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate, the study, which was released on Wednesday, examined 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news outlets, to arrive at the aforementioned conclusion. The authors note that the most positive stories on Obama were about politics, rather than policy - stories like polling, the electoral map, and tactics.

The entire study of the Washington-based group is available at www.journalism.org., and the findings present “a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage.” McCain’s coverage began positively, but turned sharply negative with his reaction to the financial crisis.

McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, too saw her media coverage plunge from largely positive to largely negative over the six-week period, more so as reporters increasingly probed her record, and mused on her sometimes bumpy television interviews.

The study said Sarah Palin’s coverage had an “up and down trajectory, moving from quite positive, to very negative, to more mixed.” The negative coverage dealt with looks into her public record and her relationship with the press. The authors of the study said: “Little of her trouble came from coverage of her personal traits or family issues.”  

Though the Republican attempts to attack Obama’s character did hurt the Democrat’s media coverage, the negativity in his tone, when he was dropping in the polls, became positive when he began to rise.