This article shows the bias of the news against Trump and Conservatives
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2020/12/31/rewind-medias-four-year-war-against-trump-presidency
The Media’s
Four-Year War Against the Trump Presidency
Rich Noyes December 31st, 2020 8:55 AM
While every President has their critics
in the press, the Trump presidency has been unique in that a massive
percentage of the media — hosts, columnists, commentators,
contributors, anchors and working reporters — openly mock and
disparage the President of the United States, often to the cheers of
their brethren. Here’s eight minutes of their worst:
The Media Research Center is the
only institution that has comprehensively tracked the liberal media’s
concerted effort to tear down this President. We’ve analyzed every
broadcast evening news story since January 20, 2017; we’ve
supplemented this research with dozens of additional studies
examining broadcast morning news and the liberal cable networks; and
we’ve posted thousands of articles detailing all of this bias to
our NewsBusters blog.
After four years, our research
documents a liberal media establishment that jettisoned its last
professional restraints to become active opponents of the President
of the United States:
■ The Honeymoon from Hell:
Instead of the traditional “honeymoon” period with the press,
reporters began taking swipes at President Trump mere moments
after he concluded his Inaugural
Address. Our first study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage
found the broadcast networks punished him with 89 percent negative
coverage during those early days, by far the most hostile treatment
of any incoming American President.
Harvard’s Shorenstein Center posted
very similar results, finding CBS and NBC’s coverage of Trump
during this period was 93 percent negative; the same group determined
news coverage of Barack Obama’s first 100 days was 59 percent
positive. The media’s #resistance was already well under way.
■ The Russia Collusion Cloud:
During the President’s first year in office, one-fifth of all
broadcast evening news coverage was spent on the Russia
investigation, wrapping Trump in a perpetual cloud of suspicion and
stealing valuable airtime away from key administration initiatives.
By the time it ended in 2019, those three newscasts alone had spent
an astounding 2,634 minutes on the Mueller probe, yammering endlessly
about a “constitutional crisis” even as they buried crucial
questions surrounding the investigation’s bias. Over 31 months,
these newscasts spent a mere 40 minutes on the blatant bias of FBI
agents revealed in text messages; gave just 34 minutes to the
Democratic-funded dossier used to jump-start the investigation; and
spent just 20 minutes on how the Obama administration might have
abused the FISA courts to monitor a Trump campaign advisor. Just
before this year’s election, declassified notes exposed the Russia
collusion probe as a Hillary Clinton “plan” to distract from her
e-mail server, and that President Obama was briefed on that plan.
Despite spending such a huge amount of airtime over three years
chasing the Russia story, ABC, CBS and NBC refused to provide even a
second of coverage to these damning documents.
■ Trashing His Policies:
When they weren’t hyping fruitless investigations, the networks
zeroed in on whichever Trump policy was most despised by liberal
activists at that moment, then pounded it with bad press. During the
first weeks of the administration, the favored target was the
so-called “travel ban” (223 minutes of airtime in just 11 weeks,
93% of which was negative).
Next up was the effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare, drawing 384
minutes from March 1 through July 31 (after John McCain’s
thumbs-down killed GOP reform plans). The network spin on Trump’s
replacement plan was even more negative than that of the “travel
ban,” 95 percent negative.
And during the first 18 months of the
Trump presidency, immigration received the most airtime of any policy
topic. The networks’ spin was relentlessly hostile to the
administration (92% negative) as these newscasts framed nearly all of
their coverage around the plight of those adversely affected by
enforcement and virtually ignored anyone harmed by illegal
immigration. The hostility was even more pronounced on cable news:
During a three-day period in June 2018, CNN and MSNBC talking heads
made 22 references to Trump’s policies as being akin to slavery,
FDR’s Japanese internment camps, or the Holocaust.
■ Accomplishments Ignored:
In his first year in office, President Trump took action to promote
religious freedom by loosening ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate;
reform veteran’s care after Obama’s scandalous administration of
VA hospitals; and appoint a record 12 judges to the federal circuit
courts of appeal. Yet in a year that saw nearly 100 hours of evening
news coverage of the new President, these accomplishments ranged from
a paltry six minutes (for promoting religious freedom) to a nearly
non-existent 37 seconds (for elevating conservative judges).
In November and December, 2017, these
newscasts pounded President Trump’s tax reform package with 173
minutes of (80% negative) coverage as it was being debated in
Congress. But in the first two months of 2018, as the plan’s
benefits were quickly realized in big bonuses for many workers, an
improving economic outlook and a soaring stock market, the networks
abandoned their interest; evening news coverage evaporated to just
nine minutes, a 95 percent decline in coverage from the prior two
months.
Another major Trump accomplishment:
the virtual destruction of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. By
October 2018, U.S. backed coalition forces had regained nearly all of
the territory that the self-ordained caliphate occupied in 2015. Yet
on network evening broadcasts, the President and his administration
received virtually no credit for this achievement, with only 33
minutes (a minuscule 0.33% of all Trump coverage up to that point)
mentioning their role in the successful fight against ISIS.
■ Impeachment Smothers
More Success: Beginning only two days after Trump was elected in 2016
— and more than two months before he was sworn in — media talking
heads had been suggesting his impeachment and removal from office. So
it was probably inevitable that soon after Mueller’s Russia probe
ended without finding proof of collusion, the media leaped on the
President’s phone call with the Ukrainian president as grounds for
their long sought impeachment investigation.
From September 24, 2019 to January 31,
2020, impeachment drowned out all other Trump topics, with 1,082
minutes of airtime, or three-fifths (61%) of all Trump administration
coverage. The frenzied coverage eclipsed successes such as the
killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (45 minutes before the
networks dropped it from their newscasts) and the administration’s
economic policies (just 14 minutes). During the Clinton years, the
media deplored impeachment as the persecution of an elected
President, but hypocritically flipped those standards during the
Trump years. Like the Russia probe, the impeachment drama stole more
valuable months from the President when he could have been pursuing
his agenda, yet reporters were nonetheless morose when it ended —
inevitably — with Trump’s acquittal by the Republican Senate. TV
talking heads decried the verdict as a “travesty” and a “sham.”
■ The Virus that Ate the 2020
News Agenda: As with the Russia investigation and
impeachment, the coronavirus pandemic became the anti-Trump story the
media loved to report, crowding out nearly all other topics. From the
initial reports in January through October 20, 2020, the ABC, CBS and
NBC evening newscasts spent 1,745 minutes reporting on the
administration’s handling of the virus; the spin of this coverage
was 95 percent negative. (This does not include an additional 140
minutes about the President’s own coronavirus diagnosis.) In
contrast, those broadcasts spent only 113 minutes
reporting on the President’s handling
of the economy, a 15-to-one disparity. The economy was largely a good
news story for Trump (even on the networks, the spin of these stories
was a remarkable 79% positive), but it was essentially lost amid an
ocean of bad news about the virus.
For example, the five jobs reports
from June 5 to October 2 showed a record 11,161,000 jobs were created
in the extraordinary snapback from the pandemic recession. Those
reports were only given a combined 16 minutes, 55 seconds of airtime
when they were released, and each time correspondents wrapped them in
negativity. When 4.8 million new jobs were announced on July 2, CBS
Evening News fill-in anchor Margaret Brennan offered an immediate
downer: “That good news comes with a big catch,” predicting new
lockdowns would cause future job losses.
But that didn’t happen — the next
month saw another huge gain: 1.8 million new jobs, yet “many
economists fear temporary job losses are becoming permanent,” NBC’s
Peter Alexander fretted on the August 7 Nightly News. On October 29,
the media were confronted with another record-setting economic
report: the single biggest quarterly jump in economic growth, 33.1
percent on an annual basis (the previous record came more than 70
years ago: 16.7% in the first three months of 1950). The three
evening newscasts combined gave it a stingy two minutes, 23 seconds
of airtime, pouring on the pessimism. “The U.S. economy still
has not bounced back in full from the huge hit it took during the
peak of the shutdowns,” NBC correspondent Jo Ling Kent griped on
Nightly News.
■ More Accomplishments Overlooked:
As the 2020 election neared, the President and his team made
history by brokering peace agreements with Israel and several of her
Arab neighbors. Yet in 33 days that culminated in a White House
signing ceremony on September 15, the network evening newscasts
delivered just nine minutes of coverage to these historic agreements.
Amid a summer of protests and racial
unrest, these newscasts glossed over the improvements brought by 2018
passage of the President’s criminal justice reform legislation: a
meager 35 seconds of airtime from June 1 through September 30.
Instead, the networks doled out 192 minutes of mostly (96%)
condemnatory coverage of the President’s response to the George
Floyd case and other race-related matters.
The Obama administration added a
flurry of federal regulations, adding an estimated $108 billion
annual burden on the economy. Upon taking office, the Trump
administration engaged in aggressive deregulation, which the White
House Council of Economic Advisors estimated would ultimately benefit
each American household to the tune of $3,100 each. Yet such a
tangible achievement mattered little to the media; from January 20,
2017 through October 20, 2020 the big three evening newscasts —
combined — supplied just 11 minutes of airtime, or less than 15
seconds per month.
In his first year, President Trump
took action to start long-stalled pipeline projects to boost
America’s energy independence, but the networks rewarded the effort
with a tiny seven minutes of coverage. Policies to expand drilling
offshore and in the Arctic were given even less airtime — just five
minutes over the course of his presidency. Yet those same networks
pounced on Trump’s rejection of liberal orthodoxy on climate
change, dumping 111 minutes of (mostly negative) coverage — nearly
ten times more airtime than the push for energy independence.
■ Campaign Bias: During
their August conventions, both parties theoretically had a chance to
make their case to voters, but while liberal cable news outlets CNN
and MSNBC chose to let the Democratic advertisement run without any
significant interruption, they refused to give equal treatment to
Republicans. During the GOP convention, cable anchors and reporters
repeatedly stepped over the party-produced content to deplore and
criticize what viewers were trying to watch. The interruptions on
MSNBC, in fact, were 600 TIMES greater during the Republican
convention (201 minutes) than during the Democratic convention (21
seconds). While the media continued their four-year practice of
harshly criticizing President Trump, they ignored controversies
involving his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
In the spring, the networks refused for
weeks to cover serious allegations from a former staffer that Biden
sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. After a meager 23 minutes of
coverage on the three evening newscasts in late April and early May,
the media dropped the story, despite the fact that at least eight
corroborating witnesses had come forward in the case.
Following the primaries, Biden worked
with socialist Senator Bernie Sanders to create a 110-page
“blueprint” for radical change, then picked a running mate,
Senator Kamala Harris, who one analysis found to be even more
left-wing than Sanders. Yet the criticism that Biden and Harris,
would pursue left-wing policies outside of the mainstream was given a
mere five minutes, 43 seconds of airtime over 12 weeks of fall
campaign coverage, or barely two percent of the Democrats’ total
(279 minutes).
The media also bypassed the financial
scandal enveloping Biden and his son, Hunter. From the morning of
October 14, when the New York Post published new evidence of Hunter
Biden’s corrupt business dealings with Ukraine and Joe Biden’s
potential involvement, through the morning of October 27, the
broadcast networks gave it a scant 21 minutes on their morning,
evening and Sunday round table programs. When journalists did mention
the story, they spent most of their time dismissing it as Russian
disinformation. Comparing Trump to Biden, the networks could not have
made their preference more clear. Our study of evening news coverage
from July 29 to October 20 found 890 evaluative comments about Trump,
92 percent of which were negative. For Biden, the networks only
offered 91 evaluations, 66 percent of which were positive.
■ After the election, a Media
Research Center poll of 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states,
conducted by The Polling Company, found many were unaware of many of
Trump’s accomplishments or Biden’s scandals; if they had known,
17 percent would have abandoned the Democratic candidate — enough
to flip Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin to Trump, giving the President a 311 electoral vote
victory. Yet even with the media’s obvious censorship and, and
their relentless four-year onslaught of hostile press coverage, it’s
remarkable that Donald Trump drew at least 11 million more votes in
2020 than he did in 2016. That’s millions of citizens who chose to
ignore the media’s message, and instead supported a President whose
accomplishments they obviously preferred.
That should be a warning to
journalists who refuse to restrain their activism (and a hopeful sign
for conservatives weary of a liberal media hegemony): the more they
act like partisans, the less power they will have to influence the
public’s thinking.
