The Pew Research Center has a study out measuring the coverage of the Republican Presidential candidates, as well as the coverage of President Obama. If you needed proof that the media was favoring Perry over Romney, or favoring any Republican over President Obama, here is your evidence.
The study, titled How News Media and Blogs Have Eyed the Presidential Contenders during the First Phase of the 2012 Race, looks at how much coverage a candidate has received, and what the tone of the coverage was. The coverage surveyed "includes 52 different news outlets from newspapers, cable news, broadcast television, the 12 most popular news websites in the country, and radio news (NPR, syndicated radio headlines and three talk radio personalities). "
Did you think Perry was getting good news coverage, almost like he was being anointed? Well, you were correct. Perry was favorably covered 32% of the time, and covered negatively 20% of the time. No one had better positive coverage, and only two candidates, Paul and Huntsman, had lower negatives.
And what about Romney, the one most of us think would be the Republican candidate in a from 15 years ago? Favorable coverage of him was at 26%, enough to rank him 6th out of 10 Republicans and a President; negative coverage was at 27%, with only Gingrich having higher negatives of the Republicans.
What about the President? This should come as no surprise to anyone here, but he had the worst favorables of all: At no time during the study did the coverage go above 10%. The average was nine percent. His negatives were 34%; Gingrich was at 35%.
The full chart in the study can be found here. (I would like to include the image here, but Pew is not currently accepted.)
There is only so much to these numbers that can be explained by Obama being president. Not with the country believing that he is far better at dealing with jobs than the Republicans, or with Democrats being trusted more than the Democrats. This is flat out media bias.