Tradition Continues: Obsessive Broadcast Coverage of Trump Still 93% Negative

It is a tradition that continues: almost all the broadcast news coverage about President Trump has been negative in recent months. And there has been plenty of it.

“In the first 100 days since House Democrats began their impeachment push on September 24, ABC, CBS and NBC have aggressively aided the effort. A Media Research Center analysis finds the Big Three evening newscasts have battered the President with 93% negative coverage and promoted impeachment at the expense of nearly all other Trump news,” write Rich Noyes and Bill D’Agostino in their analysis of the coverage.

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The conservative press watchdog has consistently gotten the same results in previous research dating back to Mr. Trump’s campaign days. On average, the broadcast news coverage of the president was 91% negative.

This time around, the two analysts evaluated 1,053 comments about Mr. Trump which aired on the networks from Sept. 24, 2019 to January 1.

“The broadcast networks donated at least 124 hours of wall-to-wall live coverage as they pre-empted regular programming in favor of House Democrat-led impeachment activities,” the analysts said.

Three-fourths of the coverage was devoted to impeachment, which earned 849 minutes of coverage — compared to the fight against ISIS, which earned 78 minutes of coverage, North Korea (19 minutes), immigration (17 minutes) and the economy (9 minutes).

Tradition continues; Obsessive broadcast coverage of Trump still 93% negative https://t.co/cG20vBOHFD

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 13, 2020

There is also some collateral damage. This impeachment-heavy coverage has compromised the Democratic candidates. While Mr. Trump drew a total of 1,143 minutes of airtime, Joe Biden got 107 minutes, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders only 24 minutes each and Pete Buttigieg a mere 8 minutes.

Criticizing the president, however, seems paramount for the “Big Three” networks, however.

“While most citizens would want their media to be even-handed in their coverage of candidates, the networks seem poised to be as lopsidedly negative in their coverage of Trump’s 2020 campaign as they have been in their coverage of his presidency,” the analysts concluded.

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