How can the media portray candidates in a positive or negative way?

News media can choose which stories to feature and which stories to ignore or bury on the back page. They can keep a damaging story in the headlines. They can fail to publish retractions They can slant their reporting to make a candidate look better or worse. The can take quotes out of context and present them in misleading ways. Editorials, of course, do not claim to be unbiased and intentionally favor one candidate. Papers which profess to be neutral can give more space to columnists or letters to the editors that have a single point of view.