Fact Check 30: The MSM produced the most wildly lopsided election “news” coverage in history
As the Media Research Center has documented, ABC, CBS and NBC are now de facto extensions of the Democratic Party -- and are, collectively, the most powerful disinformation peddlers on US soil.
One week before Election Day, a new analysis from the Media Research Center finds that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history. Since July, ABC, CBS and NBC have treated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to 78 percent positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85 percent negative coverage. (See Methodology explanation at the end of this post.)
The difference in coverage between the two candidates is far greater than in 2016, when both Trump and then-challenger Hillary Clinton received mostly negative coverage (91% negative for Trump, vs. 79% negative for Clinton). It’s even greater than in 2020, when Joe Biden was treated to 66 percent positive coverage, vs. 92 percent negative for Trump.
The main reason for the imbalance: Since July, the Big Three have swamped their audiences with more than 230 minutes of airtime — virtually all of it negative — about an array of personal controversies surrounding the former President, yet provided extremely light coverage or altogether ignored many controversies involving Vice President Harris. Instead, Harris’s coverage has been larded with enthusiastic quotes from pro-Harris voters, creating a positive “vibe” for the Democrat even as network reporters criticize Trump themselves. […]
The Big Three spent 18 minutes criticizing Trump for disseminating supposed misinformation about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton; 15 minutes pounding Trump for saying some immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets; plus an additional 13 minutes floating concerns about Trump’s age and fitness for another term as President. On each one of these topics, the networks hammered Trump with coverage ranging from 97 to 100 percent negative.
Harris faced no such onslaught. Over fourteen weeks, evening news viewers heard a scant 5 minutes, 22 seconds of GOP criticisms that she’s too liberal, barely one-sixth the airtime spent on the claim Trump is a “fascist.” None of this coverage included any criticisms of Harris from either network reporters or nonpartisan sources.
Additional sources that document the “news” media’s pro-Democrat, anti-Republican bias
A report from the Media Research Center’s (MRC) NewsBusters found that an analysis of “100 campaign stories” aired on World News Tonight, hosted by David Muir, found “25 clearly positive statements” made about Harris from “reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources,” which represented a 100 percent positive spin on the outlets reporting for Harris.
The 100 campaign stories that MRC reviewed stemmed from July 21, when Harris entered the 2024 presidential race, to September 6.
An analysis of ABC’s reporting on Trump found “five clearly positive statements” and “66 negative statements,” representing a 93 percent negative spin on the outlets reporting for Trump.
The MRC’s NewsBusters report noted that “ABC’s reporters and anchors either jumped in to criticize Trump themselves, or broadcast negative comments from non-partisan sources to impart a heavily negative spin to the former President’s coverage.”
The findings show of 1,600 journalists polled, just 3.4% identified as Republicans. More than 36% said they are Democrats, and the majority, 51%, said they were independent. Nearly 9% of respondents identified as “other.”
The numbers are a drastic change from 50 years ago, when the poll started. In 1971, more than 35% identified as Democrats and over 25% identified as Republicans. In that same poll, nearly 33% of respondents said they were independents.
You may have heard about the NPR senior editor who went public with his concerns about liberal bias at his news organization. He says this came after years of in-house conversations about the subject — conversations he felt went nowhere. Perhaps you also heard that he was just suspended for five days without pay for what he did. And then, today, he resigned.
Twenty-eight years ago, in March 1996, another journalist, this one a correspondent at CBS News, went public with his concerns about liberal bias at his news organization. This also came after years of in-house conversations about bias — conversations he felt went nowhere.
I have a great deal of knowledge about the CBS News correspondent, about what he did and why he did it. I was that journalist.
Uri Berliner, the NPR editor, wrote for The Free Press that NPR “lost America’s trust” by approaching news stories with a progressive frame of mind.
Back in 1996, I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I’m more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don’t trust us. And for good reason.”
Media Bias 101 summarizes decades of survey research showing how journalists vote, what journalists think, what the public thinks about the media, and what journalists say about media bias. The following links take you to dozens of different surveys, with key findings and illustrative charts. (Most recent update: May 2014)
A printer-friendly, fully-formatted 48-page version of the report (updated January 2014) is available in PDF format here (1.8 MB).
Part One: What Journalists Think
Surveys over the past 30 years have consistently found that journalists — especially those at the highest ranks of their profession — are much more liberal than rest of America. They are more likely to vote liberal, more likely to describe themselves as liberal, and more likely to agree with the liberal position on policy matters than members of the general public.
Part Two: How the Public Views the Media
A wide variety of public opinion polls have documented the fact that most Americans now see the media as politically biased, inaccurate, intrusive, and a tool of powerful interests. By a nearly three-to-one margin, those who see political bias believe the media bend their stories to favor liberals.
Part Three: What Journalists Say about Media Bias
Over the years, the Media Research Center has catalogued the views of journalists on the subject of bias. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many journalists still refuse to acknowledge that most of the establishment media tilts to the left. Even so, a number of journalists have admitted that the majority of their brethren approach the news from a liberal angle.
The collapse of MSM “news” organizations’ commitment to practicing objective journalism, and separating it from opinion, is now unmistakable to the American people
As has been pointed out elsewhere (citation needed), news organizations now have a lower honesty and trustworthiness rating with the American people than even Congrses, telemarketers and used-car salespeople (previously the lowest-ranked professions):
Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media -- such as newspapers, television and radio -- first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year.
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
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