Years ago, the athletic director at the university where I was doing public relations shared his frustrations with our staff concerning the sports coverage in the major metropolitan daily newspaper. Complaining that it seemed consistently unfair and rarely balanced, he asked the sports information director to schedule a lunch confab with the newspaper’s sports editor. The athletic director insisted on it despite advice to the contrary. At the time, the school’s major revenue sports — football and basketball — had disappointing seasons that had fallen way short of expectations.

At the lunch, the athletic director rattled off his litany of complaints and the editor listened politely. Finally, the AD asked the editor what could the school do to improve the relationship. The editor took out his pen and scrawled “WIN” on a paper napkin.

There’s the usual volume of noise out there — particularly from the McCain camp — that the election coverage is skewed heavily toward Obama, whose poll numbers, especially in the last five weeks, have been stable nationally and trending upward in particular states. Read any online comments section at any newspaper, blog, or politically-themed web site and you’ll get a quick sampling of these frustrations, some stated articulately and others in language that’s, say, hardly reflective of the Queen’s English. A lot of McCain supporters are understandably just as cranky as the candidate.

Objectivity in journalism is a masturbatory dream. There is no such thing as objective journalism. Any expectations of such do not reflect a pragmatic approach to the craft. Certainly, there are those who proclaim their work to be fair and balanced but, again, it depends upon whose frame of reference is being used as the baseline. Scholars of mass media have studied extensively the issues of agenda setting, framing, and third-person effects with regard to media and news coverage. In a nutshell, the cumulative verdict is mixed.

Journalism is really an interpretive craft — where telling a good story requires facts, details, verification, attribution, and context when it comes to breadth and depth of perspective. Good PR is as much an exercise of impression and perception management as it is the practice of honesty, transparency and accountability in terms of cultivating a reputation of solid credibility. The best reporters always can detect if that PR effort is being driven by honorable practices or by bullshit steeped in self-denial and cognitive dissonance.

Recently, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined the tone of the press coverage for both candidates in the six weeks following the national conventions. The researchers conclude that while Obama’s positive coverage hasn’t changed all that much, McCain’s negative coverage has really spiked:

“For Obama during this period, just over a third of the stories were clearly positive in tone (36%), while a similar number (35%) were neutral or mixed. A smaller number (29%) were negative.

“For McCain, by comparison, nearly six in ten of the stories studied were decidedly negative in nature (57%), while fewer than two in ten (14%) were positive.”

The one thing that has changed markedly since before the conventions is McCain’s media exposure. Before, Obama was getting at least 50 percent more press coverage, according to the Pew researchers. Now, both candidates are in a “virtual dead heat,” as the researchers describe.

What’s more is that when the vice-presidential candidates are added to the mix, the Republicans actually get the edge. In fact, Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, has been virtually invisible in terms of press coverage save for the vice presidential debate earlier this month. According to Pew: “Aside from that week, the limited coverage he did receive was far more negative than Palin’s, and nearly as negative as McCain’s.”

Meanwhile, Palin’s coverage has followed a roller-coaster trajectory. All told, it has been more negative than positive. In all, 39 percent of Palin stories carried a negative tone, while 28 percent were positive, and 33 percent were neutral. Very little coverage — only 5 percent of the stories — has been devoted to Palin’s personal life and family. The Pew researchers conclude:

“The findings suggest that, in the end, Palin’s portrayal in the press was not the major factor hurting McCain. Her coverage, while tilting negative, was far more positive than her running mate’s.”

Their sample included more than 2,400 news stories from 48 major media outlets.

Is this a big deal? Hardly. John Harris and Jim Vandehei of Politico.com state it well:

“There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe.

“As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.”

To boot, Politico put its October coverage under the microscope. Some 110 stories had a more favorable tone for Obama than for McCain while 69 stories accomplished the opposite.

Few people are really sophisticated about the media environment. Trust me, I’ve seen this all too frequently in public relations. And, political reporters are not like investigative journalists, who have a far different psychological temperament. In fact, the horse race mentality dominates how elections are covered.

And, it’s no different in 2008. If one looks closely at the Pew study results, the data do not lead to any reasonable conclusion that journalists are cheerleading for Obama. However, the data indicate “that a strong suggestion that winning in politics begat winning coverage, thanks in part to the relentless tendency of the press to frame its coverage of national elections as running narratives about the relative position of the candidates in the polls and internal tactical maneuvering to alter those positions.”

Memory is a funny thing in political campaigns. I recall clearly in mid-summer when McCain had a truly effective period of polling in the aftermath of those Obama-as-celebrity ads. The tone of Obama’s press coverage was decidedly neutral, paralleling his temporary drop in the polls. McCain’s press coverage achieved a corresponding inverse effect. His poll numbers went up and so did the proportion of positive press coverage.

In fact, the Pew researchers say this is not unique:

“Nor are these numbers different than what we have seen before. Obama’s numbers are similar to what we saw for John Kerry four years ago as he began rising in the polls, and McCain’s numbers are almost identical to what we saw eight years ago for Democrat Al Gore.”

In the relentless campaign, it might be easy to forget that reporters actually once were quite enchanted with McCain who was quite free in his “Straight Talk Express.” Even now, most reporters actually find Obama to be distant if not a bit unapproachable. Obama will have a short honeymoon as president, there is no doubt.

Because of his self-proclaimed maverick status, McCain had enjoyed a good rapport with reporters, one of the few Republicans who actually did. However, more recently, as he has limited his media access and has, in effect, repudiated his original political philosophy, McCain has been taking a pretty big bruising in the press and justifiably so. The driving meme for those stories is McCain’s unconscionable sellout, as explained by the Politico editors.

And, unlike Obama’s campaign, McCain’s has recently been plagued with stories of nasty internal fights and journalists, like anybody else, enjoy a good drama. Already, one can see Republicans running for cover from what surely will be widespread fallout after their candidates are drummed out next week.

Forget the issues. Forget policy matters. What’s with Sarah Palin’s expensive wardrobe? This has been far more interesting fodder. Merely, it’s a matter of journalists following their own natural media instincts. And, unfortunately for McCain, he is not running a winning campaign.