One result from your analysis of the first week, I think, after Labor Day, jumps out to all of us. In that September 4th-to-10th time period, the tone of the stories you found about Al Gore was fairly balanced: 45 positive, 55 negative. But look at Bush: just 21 percent of the stories you found about Bush were positive. The vast majority, 79 percent, were negative in tone (Related Chart).

Now, how do you account for such a difference?

HESS: And I should say that's on virtually all three networks, very little difference between them. He does a little better on PBS. He gets 30 percent positive.

That's basically three stories. It's George Bush's feelings about Adam Clymer, it's the debate on debates, and it's the poll ratings. So those are pretty rough stories for him.

But there also is a dirty little secret that he's going to have to learn about press relations, and that has to do with the schmoozing he's been doing with reporters. That would be the more available the candidate allows himself to be, the more likely he is to upstage his staged events. And he's -- he'll, I think, is going to change his press relations.

WOODRUFF: But Steve, you're not suggesting that his relationship with the press ...[determines] how he comes across?

HESS: Oh, no.

WOODRUFF: To the public, television and so forth?

HESS: No, not at all. But then when start to break these stories down into substance and horse race, you find that this year, in the first week, they're overwhelmingly about the horse race, the strategy, who's ahead and so forth. He's got to break through and get on a message and get it off that and get it onto his message.

NBC had the most coverage this week, but also it was overwhelmingly about the horse race. There was, for example, 50/50 horse race/the substance for CBS, 3-2 on ABC, and 2-1 horse race on NBC (Related Chart). So he's got to get it off the who's ahead, who's behind, and onto whatever issues he feels are his...

WOODRUFF: And we need to point out, I think, that earlier in the year when Gore was behind he was getting more negative press than Bush is getting right now.