The center looked at news reports on the big three broadcast networks over the first six weeks of the campaign and found 67 percent of all stories about George W. Bush were negative and just 33 percent positive. Reports about Al Gore were almost as critical: 61 percent negative, 39 percent positive. Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution has been analyzing those data and writing about it every Monday in "USA Today."

The network coverage of this presidential campaign: so far fair?

STEPHEN HESS, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Well, pretty much on balance between the two candidates. And the important things is, that is very different than it has been in the last two elections. In 1992, it was way overboard for Bill Clinton. And the critics said: Well, that's because there's an anti-incumbency bias. We have always hit the president harder. And George Bush got it that time.

Four years later, it was again in Bill Clinton's side in the press. And they said: Well, it must be a liberal bias, even though Clinton had been badly treated by the press, he could claim -- rightly, I think -- in his first term. So this is quite different to see that both of them are treated about the same. But we should say, treated about the same means twice as much negative as positive.

SHAW: Overall, Steve, why so much complaining about alleged media bias?

HESS: Oh, I think a lot of is it in the eye of the beholden. Everybody thinks that the media is biased against what they particularly believe in. And, as the media becomes more and more analytical, more and more people say: Ah, that must be biased. So it would be pretty hard to -- as indeed, there have been scholarly studies where you have taken the coverage of the Middle East and you have brought in a group of pro-Arabs and a group of pro-Israelis.

And they're seeing the exactly the same thing. And when they come out, you test them, and they both say, it was biased against them. So a lot of that is going on.

SHAW: Has quote-negativity become a part of news broadcasting?

HESS: I think that is true. I think it's a very hard edge. For example, NBC has a segment now called "The Truth Squad." Well, that is a phrase inherited from campaigns where you send somebody after the candidate to find that he's telling the untruth. So, really, it's to find out what the candidate -- the untruth of the candidates.

The same would be with CBS's "Reality Check." It's really to find the unreality. Now, for example, if you go to PBS, the "Jim Lehrer News Hour," you would find quite the opposite. The focus is on a positive, rather than negative. So it's not, in other words, framed in the stars. It's framed in the newsrooms.

SHAW: One quickie before you get out the door: Is the network news coverage giving a fair picture of these candidates?

HESS: It's giving a picture of them as campaigners. And that is what they are really looking at, when we look at this positive, negative: so that one week we have a rat ad. And suddenly the Bush -- goes way down negative. The next week we have something to do with Gore's dog and mother-in-law. And it goes way down negative for Gore. So when we say they're about the same, we are really doing this by averaging a roller coaster. [see Weekly Reports on Main Page]"