Who Got the Most Bad Press?

So Hillary says the media is too hard on her, and most of us thought the Bittergate and Wrightgate stuff went on way too long, but overall, it's John McCain who has failed "to control the media narrative," according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism.
Some key points:

Shortly after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate, the narrative about him began to turn more skeptical—and indeed became more negative than the coverage of Clinton herself. What’s more, an additional analysis of more general campaign topics suggests the Obama narrative became even more negative later in March, April and May...

On the Republican side, John McCain, the candidate who quickly clinched his party’s nomination, has had a harder time controlling his message in the press. Fully 57% of the narratives studied about him were critical in nature, though a look back through 2007 reveals the storyline about the Republican nominee has steadily improved with time...

Public perceptions of McCain and Obama, a companion survey shows, largely tracked with the tenor of the press coverage’s major narrative themes. With Hillary Clinton, however, the public seemed to have developed opinions about her that ran counter to the media coverage, perhaps based on a pre-existing negative disposition to her that unfolded over the course of the campaign...

And as usual it's the horse race that has mattered most to the media, the easiest thing to report.

Fully 78% of the stories studied between January 1 and the first week of May have focused on political matters, such as who won the latest primary. By contrast, policy stories made up 7% of the stories, personal matters 7%, and the candidates’ public record, 2%. And few major storylines stand out.