On its own, <em>criticism</em> is itself a negative term, to find all the failures within the given text. But it usually depends on how you use the term. Constructive criticism is a good kind of criticism, generally pointing out the good things.
The word <em>criticism</em> sort of works like <em>consequence</em>. The word can be both negative, and positive, depending how it is used. But your question asks about the word <em>criticism</em> by itself, in this case, the answer is True.
Hopefully this helps, even though my answer is a little late.