NEW YORK (AP) – A study of news coverage of the war in Iraq fails to support a conclusion that events were portrayed either negatively or positively most of the time.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at nearly 2,200 stories on television, newspapers and Web sites and found that most of them couldn’t be categorized either way.Twenty-five percent of the stories were negative and 20 percent were positive, according to the study, released Sunday.

Despite the exhaustive look, the study likely won’t change the minds of war supporters who considered the media hostile to the Bush administration, or opponents who think reporters weren’t questioning enough, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director.

“There was enough of both to annoy both camps,” he said. “But the majority of stories were just news.”

The three network evening newscasts tended to be more negative than positive, while the opposite was true of morning shows, the study said.

Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, unlike the more evenhanded CNN and MSNBC, the study said.

Copy the Story Link