WASHINGTON: The US media coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign has been more negative than positive, with the harshest comments coming in social media, a study said on Friday.

The Pew Research Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that coverage of President Barack Obama was not as negative as that of Republican Mitt Romney, but that the tables were turned after the first presidential debate.

Overall from Aug 27 through Oct 21, 19 per cent of stories about Obama studied in a cross section of mainstream media were “favourable in tone” while 30 per cent were unfavorable and 51 per cent mixed.

For Romney, 15 per cent of the stories studied were favourable, 38 per cent unfavorable and 47 per cent.

Pew said most of the advantage in coverage for Obama came in September in the form of highly negative coverage for Romney, when the Republican nominee was losing ground in the polls. Romney was also criticised for comments about Libya and a video in which he effectively dismissed 47 per cent of the American public.

But that changed after the first debate on Oct 3. Since then 20 per cent of stories about Romney were favorable and 30 per cent unfavorable. For Obama, 13 per cent of coverage was positive and 36 per cent negative.

A similar study in 2008 found that candidate Barack Obama got mostly favorable coverage (36 to 29 per cent) while articles about Republican John McCain were mostly negative (57 to 14 per cent).

The Pew study said the mainstream media was not as harsh as social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

On Twitter, the study found 45 per cent of comments about Obama negative and 25 per cent positive. For Romney, 58 per cent were negative and just 16 per cent positive.—AFP