PEW: Coverage of Santorum Turns Negative and Sparse

PEW Research Center stats for March 26 to April 1, 2012 media coverage:

"While Mitt Romney's campaign narrative remained positive last week, Rick Santorum endured by far his worst stretch of coverage this year--suggesting the media may be moving closer to discounting him as a possible nominee."
. . .
"From March 26-April 1, the former Massachusetts governor generated almost three times as much coverage as his closest competitor (Newt Gingrich). And for the second week in a row, his positive coverage exceeded negative by a margin of 41% to 29%, with 30% neutral, according to the Campaign 2012 in the Media, a weekly tracking of the tone and volume of coverage of the candidates by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

"If Romney's endorsements, as well as a growing sense that he will win the April 3 Wisconsin primary, helped fuel his positive coverage, they also contributed to negative assessments about Santorum--who saw a dramatic downturn in his coverage. For the week, 50% of Santorum's coverage was negative compared with 18% positive and 32% neutral. That comes one week after his positive coverage outweighed his negative by 17 percentage points--a 49-point turnaround."
. . .
"Perhaps as tellingly, the amount of attention the media paid to Santorum plunged last week. He was a significant figure in 21% of the week's campaign stories, down from 50% the week before and representing his lowest level of coverage in nine weeks. That compared to 63% for Romney last week."

"The former Pennsylvania senator received less coverage than Newt Gingrich last week."
[emphasis added]

The Media thought Gingrich (no chance to win in the big story of the week--the Wisconsin primary tomorrow--and with about half the delegates as Santorum and a quarter of the delegates as Romney) more newsworthy than Santorum. This is the Media trusted for serious news coverage.

What do you bet that fourth place finisher Pres. Obama will zoom to Gov. Romney's numbers and Romney will drop to Santorum's numbers as soon as Romney gets the number of necessary delegates? For Media non-favorites coverage is nasty, brutish and short unless they do a Reagan and win anyway.