Print newspaper theSun gave the most comparatively neutral political coverage among four major print dailies, based on a study by the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ).

In its 2011 Freedom of Expression report, the CIJ details its monitoring of four newspapers - New Straits Times (NST) , The Star , Utusan Malaysia and theSun - to compare each paper’s coverage of BN and Pakatan Rakyat.

Of the four papers, only theSun , which is distributed free, gave any positive coverage at all to Pakatan while the other three only gave negative or neutral coverage to the opposition pact.

NONE It was also the only paper to give BN some negative coverage, with the other three papers only giving positive or neutral coverage to the ruling coalition.

Across the board, the newspapers were overwhelmingly in favour of BN, both in terms of coverage as well as positive portrayals of the government.

NST mentioned BN the most, in 95 percent of its stories, with The Star and theSun at 89 percent and 90 percent respectively.

Two-thirds of the coverage of BN in both NST and The Star were positive, with the remaining one-third neutral.

Only theSun gave BN more neutral than positive coverage, with 44 percent of BN stories having positive angles and a bigger 52 percent being of neutral coverage.

Interestingly, Utusan Malaysia gave the widest coverage to Pakatan, with 54 percent of its stories mentioning the pact. However, 77 percent of this coverage of the opposition parties was in negative light.

Najib smiling, Anwar grimacing

The study also looked at the number of monitored stories mentioning Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, as well as the extent of positive, neutral or negative coverage in those stories.

Overall, three of the papers gave Najib much more coverage than Anwar, with only Utusan featuring one more article on Anwar over Najib.

azlan Utusan and NST gave Anwar overwhelmingly negative coverage, with all of NST ’s stories on Anwar and 88 percent of Utusan ’s stories featuring the opposition leader negatively.

Once again, only theSun gave the opposition any positive coverage, with one positive and no negative stories on Anwar while the other papers only carried neutral or negative stories.

theSun was also the only paper to give Najib negative coverage - in just one story - while the other papers only featured positive or neutral stories on the prime minister.

Interestingly, CIJ also noted that the images of the two leaders used during the period clearly painted Najib in a better light compared with Anwar.

“Najib was often depicted surrounded by people reaching out to shake his hand, striding confidently with other world leaders or smiling engagingly.

“Anwar on the other hand, if his image did make the front few pages, was often depicted frowning or grimacing,” it says in the report.

The media NGO noted that it was the ownership of media outfits by BN parties that resulted in such partisan news reporting, because it meant interference in editorial decision-making.

“The denials aside, there is clear evidence that the ownership structure results in partisan news reporting,” it says.

The study was conducted from March 21 to April 30, 2011, analysing the content of the first story in each newspaper that mentioned a political party.

The period coincided with the campaign period of the Sarawak state election of April 16 last year.

CIJ recently highlighted the issue of media partisanship with a study on the coverage of Bersih in the run-up to the April 28 rally, finding that there was a near-blackout in terms of reporting on the event, compared with the Bersih 2.0 rally of July 9 last year.