News coverage of President Trump is really, really negative. Even on Fox News.

[Commentary] The early television news reviews of the Trump presidency are in and they are not good — not even on Fox News.

Only 3 percent of the reports about Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were positive, while 43 percent were negative and 44 percent were neutral. On “Special Report,” the Fox News program that most closely resembles the evening network news, 25 percent of the reports about President Trump were negative, compared with 12 percent positive and the remainder neutral. In other words, even the conservative-leaning Fox News featured twice as much bad press as good press.

The networks differed in their emphases. Fox News focused on personnel decisions in the new White House, and coverage of that issue area was more positive than negative by a ratio of 2 to 1. Another bright spot for President Trump was Fox’s coverage of economic news: There was mostly positive coverage of the new president’s initiatives that are intended to strengthen the international competitiveness of U.S. business. CBS and NBC focused more on Trump’s immigration policy and whether he was respecting U.S. constitutional norms such as separation of powers. Most of these news reports were far more negative than positive. But CBS and NBC coverage of Trump’s international diplomacy was more positive than negative, but there were fewer stories on that topic than on others. Of course, the news media’s role as a monitor of government usually leads to at least some negative news. But the negative coverage of President Trump seems unusual.

[Stephen J. Farnsworth is a professor of political science and international affairs at the University of Mary Washington, S. Robert Lichter is a professor of communication at George Mason University, and Roland Schatz is president of Media Tenor Ltd.]