What can your average fair-minded person take from this?
The tone of coverage remains incessantly hostile: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive (excluding neutral statements), matching the historically bad press we documented in 2017. Yet despite the media’s obvious disapproval, public opinion of the President actually improved slightly during 2018, from an average 40% approval on January 1 to 42.7% approval on December 31, according to RealClearPolitics.
Keep in mind that this is news coverage — stories placed in the paper or on screen by editors, pursued by reporters approved by editors and publisher, working in an office atmosphere that bestows sometimes plaudits on confreres, rarely any sense of discomfort as to choice of story, how it’s written, etc.
Nobody here but us chickens, we can hear them saying. We like it this way.
Blithe Spirit 