As NewsBusters media editor and research analyst Bill D’Agostino documented last year, NBC News and MSNBC gifted lawyer Michael Avenatti with 113 TV appearances, with Today giving him his first as he pursued cases against President Trump. On Friday, the so-called “creepy porn lawyer” was convicted of trying to extort shoemaker Nike for $25 million dollars. Despite their intertwined history, NBC Nightly News kept Avenatti at an arm’s length.
It has been four days since a deranged leftist tried to kill six Trump supporters at a voter registration event in Duval Country, Florida on Saturday with a van. In that time frame, the story had only generated a measly one minute and four seconds of airtime between three brief mentions on liberal news outlets, NBC and CNN. That’s despite the fact that the attacker had admitted to authorities that his actions were motivated by his hatred of President Trump.
With Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders emerging as the early Democratic presidential frontrunner liberal hosts and anchors – fearing an out-in-the-open socialist would be trounced by President Donald Trump – are now pitching Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg as “moderate” alternatives to Crazy Bernie. The following is a breakdown of how radically left Buttigieg and Klobuchar are, despite the media’s (false) billing of them as “moderates.”
Legendary conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh received an honor of a lifetime when President Donald Trump presented him with the Medal of Freedom at Tuesday’s State of the Union address. But his haters in the liberal media couldn’t let Limbaugh – who just announced he is battling advanced lung cancer – have this one heartwarming moment for his family and millions of fans to savor without attacking him as an undeserving racist.
According to a new Media Research Center study, for each minute the broadcast evening newscasts spent talking about the President’s successful economic programs, viewers heard 77 minutes about the Democrats’ impeachment push, a massive disparity. Overall, coverage of the President was 93% negative during the last four months, reaching 95% negative in January 2020.
For over a month the liberal media have been in an impeachment frenzy, as they insisted the only way to save the Republic was to remove the “outlaw” President as they compared him to dictators like Joseph Stalin and likened his aides to “Hitler appeasers.” Celebrities threw tantrums too. The following are just a few of the most obnoxious outbursts from the liberal media’s coverage of the impeachment process.
In the liberal media’s zeal to cover House Democrats’ push to impeach President Trump, the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential candidates — and the radical policies of their frontrunners — have all but disappeared from TV news. A Media Research Center study found the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts spent 236 minutes in January covering impeachment, compared vs. 88 minutes on the Democratic race.
In a celebration on the South Lawn of the White House Wednesday, President Trump gathered with blue-collar workers, union leaders, CEOs, and Republican lawmakers to sign the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal into law. It was a hard-fought campaign promise three years in the making that helped many Americans, but NBC Nightly News didn’t think it was noteworthy as they spent two minutes and 41 seconds on impeachment.
A Media Research Center study of broadcast evening news coverage of the opening arguments of both sides, found ABC, CBS, and NBC did not live up to the standard they demanded of Republicans. They gave Democrats double the airtime and showered their arguments with mostly praise, while expressing only criticism of the President’s legal team.
Before the Articles of Impeachment even reached the Senate, liberal journalists on broadcast and cable news insisted that any trial would be illegitimate without witnesses. Who’d ever heard of a trial without witnesses, they asked? As it turns out, their counterparts from 1999 had. Back then, journalists were adamant that any witnesses in President Clinton’s Senate trial would needlessly prolong a process whose outcome was essentially predetermined anyway.
Monday was day two for President Trump’s defense in the Senate impeachment trial and it was the first full day for his legal team to layout their fact-based arguments for acquittal. Yet, the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC chose not to air their arguments, as they did with House Democrats. Instead, they chose to disregard the defense in favor of pouncing on reported allegations made in the conveniently timed leak of former national security advisor, John Bolton’s yet to be released book.
Liberal reporters and hosts lionized lead Democratic House Manager Adam Schiff for his “dazzling” “impassioned” “brilliant” performance as he was compared to rock stars like Prince and Bruce Springsteen. However, Donald Trump’s Republican defenders were slimed as “shameless,” lazy cowards who live in “terror” of the President.
The ratings are in for the first day of the Democratic House Managers impeachment arguments in front of the Senate, and the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) collectively lost about three million viewers who would have been expected to watch their normal fare of daytime soap operas.
It doesn’t take a skilled code-breaker to figure out the liberal networks’ stance on President Donald Trump’s impeachment: There’s no doubt we need witnesses if the Senate is going to conduct a fair trial; impeachment is necessary to prove that nobody — not even the President — is above the law; and there’s no more pressing task for Congress if we’re to keep this President, and future Presidents, from acting like tyrants. But when the President being impeached was a Democrat, the spin was completely reversed.
In the first 100 days since House Democrats began their impeachment push, ABC, CBS and NBC have aggressively aided the effort. An MRC analysis finds the Big Three evening newscasts battered the President with 93% negative coverage and promoted impeachment at the expense of nearly all other Trump news. At the same time, 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.
Qasem Soleimani was responsible for thousands of deaths, including hundreds of American soldiers, but instead of commemorating the death of a war criminal, liberal reporters and hosts filled their broadcasts with somber tones as they mourned the loss of the “bold” “revered” “military genius” and Iranian “cult figure.”
Following the death of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, it’s clear that many liberal analysts, commentators, contributors, journalists, and pundits would have fallback positions at Iran’s English-language, state-run Press TV if any would lose their jobs. For MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews, he would have quite the resume. According to a NewsBusters count between Monday and Thursday evenings, he adopted the Iranian-preferred word of “assassin” and its variations 60 times while discussing the Soleimani strike.
According to a recent MRC study, the three major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) aired 45 reports about “outrage” at alleged police misconduct in 2019 — more than any topic except politics. However, only one report throughout last year described outrage at a police officer coming to harm.
Even a casual watcher of broadcast news these days knows that journalists are using increasingly emotional language in their reports. Case in point: the word "outrage," which MRC analysts found was used 229 times in ABC, CBS and NBC's evening news reports in 2019...
In recent days, journalists have mocked Republicans who’ve switched from impeachment advocates in the 1990s to impeachment foes today. But the news media have undergone a similar metamorphosis. The difference is, Republicans (and Democrats) are understood to be political partisans, while the media are ostensibly supposed to be non-partisan. But the record on impeachment shows that journalists are just as partisan as the politicians they cover.
This week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the decade. Today, it’s a look at the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome as we present the most hateful attacks on President Donald Trump.
As the decade comes to a close, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the last 10 years. Today’s installment showcases some of the decade’s most rancid quotes attacking Republicans or conservatives.
As the decade comes to a close, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the last 10 years. In today’s installment, we have the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons.
On Wednesday night, NewsBusters examined the live coverage the top three cable news networks (CNN, FNC, and MSNBC) devoted to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and, most notably, far-left, pro-impeachment CNN only covered live 33.4 percent of the hearing. But when it came time for Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, CNN carried 99.9 percent of the primetime House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.
Exasperation is in the air. Liberal journalists are convinced the only way to save the Republic is to impeach Donald Trump and yet increasingly hosts, reporters and pundits are clearly worried they and the Democrats might have missed their shot.
Despite the fact that House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee released their impeachment findings a full day ahead of Democrats, the liberal broadcast networks granted their team 10 times the coverage in just one evening. ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News granted the GOP report a measly 54 seconds of combined airtime. NBC actually ignored the GOP report during their Tuesday newscast.
MSNBC has tabbed a Bernie booster (Rachel Maddow) and Joe Biden fan (Andrea Mitchell) to be the lead moderators for Wednesday’s Democratic debate, so it’s a good bet the questions will be skewed from the left. It won't be the first time: In June, MSNBC hosted a two-night debate event where 69 percent of the questions to the very liberal field of candidates were from the left...
During the six weeks since the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry was announced, the liberal media have tried to help the cause by giving the effort wall-to-wall coverage, blasting the President with 96% negative coverage (even including criticism of his performance after the successful mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), even as they ignore how Trump’s policies have benefited the record-setting economy.
Despite the unreliable nature of anonymous sources, the three major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have used them in nearly three fifths of their news reports about the impeachment probe since it first began, mostly to pass along damning accusations against the President that cannot be independently verified.
On Tuesday, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York broke the news that the whistleblower that sparked the Trump-Ukraine impeachment push had a “significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates.” Total broadcast news coverage of this stunning revelation: A meager 38 seconds on Wednesday’s edition of NBC’s Today show.
The anonymous whistleblower who complained about President Trump’s July phone conversation with the leader of Ukraine is being touted and toasted across the liberal media, but it was a far different story 21 years ago when a Pentagon employee named Linda Tripp helped bring Bill Clinton’s perjury and obstruction of justice to the attention of Independent Counsel Ken Starr.
In just ten days (September 20 through September 30) the broadcast networks overwhelmed their evening and morning shows with more than 7 hours of coverage devoted to a whistleblower’s complaint about President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the ensuing calls for impeachment. Only 46 minutes of that coverage referenced Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal with a Ukranian company.
The liberal media have begun yet another round of frenzied impeachment speculation, this time in reaction to anonymously-sourced media reports about a supposed whistleblower complaint that has not been released. But media clucking about impeachment is nothing new — in fact, their obsession with evicting Donald Trump from the White House predates his actual Presidency.
While the liberal broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC have spent nearly 32 minutes (31 minutes, 47 seconds) hyping the disintegrating bombshell against Justice Brettt Kavanaugh over the past three days, they have withheld from viewers how Christine Blasey Ford friend (and supposed corroborating witness) Leland Keyser now states that she has does not believe Ford’s account.
Since 9:00 am ET Sunday morning, CNN and MSNBC have spent nearly four hours of airtime peddling dubious new charges of misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that allegedly took place when he was in college. The claims were first published by The New York Times late Saturday night.
So far, Biden’s 1987 scandals have been a non-factor in media coverage of his current race for the White House. But our review shows that when the multiple plagiarism accusations first appeared 32 years ago, liberal journalists treated them as Joe Biden’s first big test of character on the national stage — and, in their eyes, he flunked.
Liberal reporters and hosts have been paving the way for Joe Biden, as they have excused his non-stop gaffes as “endearing” and even “Reagan-esque.” At the same time, they were shocked by the “horror show coming out of Trump’s mouth” as MSNBCers like Chris Matthews and Donny Deutsch compared the President to tyrants like Idi Amin and blamed him for the El Paso shooting. The following is a round-up of the most obnoxious outbursts from liberal journalists and celebrities over the past month.
The MRC found ABC’s World News Tonight awarded a majority of its news coverage to just one candidate: former Vice President Joe Biden. The ten candidates who will be appearing on tonight’s debate stage — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Julian Castro and Andrew Yang — collectively received 96 percent of the airtime, while, a majority of the other candidates received less than 60 seconds of airtime on ABC’s evening newscast
The moderators for ABC’s Thursday night Democratic debate include a former Bill Clinton campaign staffer and an anchor who was actually kicked out of a Donald Trump campaign event. So it’s safe to say ABC’s Democratic debate hosts won’t be asking any tough questions of the candidates – at least none from the right. The following are just a few examples of Thursday night’s debate moderators’ history of liberalism as culled from the MRC’s archives.
From June 1 through August 31, the networks devoted 838 minutes of airtime — nearly 14 hours — to coverage of President Trump personally, and the spin of his coverage during these three months was 90% negative. Meanwhile, the 21 Democratic candidates shared 187 minutes of evening news airtime this summer, less than one-fourth of that of Trump alone, with spin that was friendlier than their coverage of the President.
As Hurricane Dorian continues to wreak havoc across the eastern seaboard, liberal cable anchors are fixated on perhaps the most frivolous piece of the news cycle: President Trump’s poorly-doctored hurricane map. Between 5:00 am and 5:00 pm Eastern time on Wednesday, CNN and MSNBC gave this non-news item a whopping 145 minutes (just under two and a half hours).
Congress may be almost evenly divided these days, but not on the liberal cable news networks. A new study by the Media Research Center finds that CNN and MSNBC host Democratic Representatives and Senators seven times more frequently than their Republican counterparts, and most often use Democratic talking points to question members of both parties.
On Friday, unsealed court documents named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former Clinton cabinet official and ex-New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as among those who allegedly had sex with an underage victim of Jeffrey Epstein. But while all three evening news broadcasts covered the case, one thing was missing: any hint that those two men are Democrats.
It got really ugly this past week as anchors, reporters, hosts and celebrities blamed Donald Trump’s “racist” rhetoric for the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. The following are just a few of the ugliest attacks on President Trump, Republicans, conservatives and gun owners from journalists and celebrities in the wake of the mass shootings.
Compared to MRC Latino’s original study five years ago, the two main Spanish-language evening news broadcasts in the U.S. have become even more heavily skewed to the left. Out of 812 stories on U.S. politics and policy, more than 70 percent were slanted in a liberal direction, compared with 240 stories (29.6%) that were balanced or neutral and only two (0.2%) which were favorable to conservatives.
So far, broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC have spent a combined 77 minutes on their flagship morning and evening newscasts covering Sunday’s horrific shooting in Dayton, Ohio. However, as these networks on Tuesday morning delved into the alleged shooter’s disturbing past and personal life, none of them spent even a second of air time discussing his apparent “leftist” political views.
CNN has dozens of anchors and political journalists, yet the network chose the Democrat-adoring, Trump-despising, black hole conspiracy theorist Don Lemon to join the more reasonable Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators of this week’s two-night Democratic presidential debates. The following is a very brief look (via the MRC’s archives) at Lemon’s most incendiary and obnoxious outbursts during his tenure at CNN.
Somebody should pitch Hollywood producers on a new type of celebrity game show called “Who Can Sink Lower?” Because every month there is an intense competition amongst entertainers to see who can descend further into the depths when it comes to heinous descriptions of Donald Trump and his supporters.
If the left-wing media were hoping for a slam dunk during Special Counsel Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, it’s clear from their reactions that they don’t think they saw one. The responses from TV journalists ranged from nonplussed to outright upset (aside from weirdly giddy CNN panels), with some analysts and reporters going so far as to declare the hearings “a disaster,” and the cause of impeachment “over.”
In the 31 months since the President took office, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts alone have spent an astounding 2,634 minutes covering the investigations into alleged Russia collusion and obstruction of justice. Yet these newscasts have barely mentioned some of the crucial unresolved questions surrounding the investigation’s bias.
Norah O’Donnell has risen through the ranks of TV jobs from MSNBC correspondent to CBS This Morning co-host. From her days defending the “centrist” Barack Obama to trashing Donald Trump as “dangerous to democracy,” the following is just a sample of the incoming CBS Evening News anchor’s career of adoring Democrats and liberals and attacking Republicans and conservatives.
On June 13, 2017, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News spent a combined seven minutes (6 minutes, 59 seconds) playing up and glorifying the ill-fated lawsuit. But on Wednesday, they could barely be bothered to report on the outcome; 40 seconds total, with 18 seconds belonging to ABC and the rest going to NBC (22 seconds).
Joe Biden was never asked about his gaffes, groping or past plagiarism. Elizabeth Warren never had to explain faking Native American ancestry. Cory Booker was never interrogated about his imaginary friend “T-Bone.” The following is a partial list of angles of attack the moderators could have pursued IF they wanted to (like they did with Republicans in 2015) bring up embarrassing, yet legitimate questions about the candidates’ backgrounds.
After two nights, NBC/MSNBC has proved that they deserve the nickname “MSDNC.” The twenty Democrats who made the presidential debate stage were treated to questions that were wildly skewed (69%) to the left, with only a scant 13% challenging the candidates to defend their outside-the-mainstream views, a five-to-one disparity.
The NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo panel that questioned the first 10 Democratic 2020 candidates spent most of Wednesday night’s debate cuing up liberal talking points and rarely confronted the contenders with the idea that their hard-edged leftism might drive away middle-of-the-road voters. An MRC analysis finds 39 of the questions at the debate echoed liberal talking points or were framed around a liberal world view, vs. only five that challenged liberal/Democratic assumptions.
It could get nasty tonight and tomorrow when NBC’s moderators bring up the topic of Donald Trump during the Democratic candidates debate. If recent history is a guide expect the moderators to ask questions that push the candidates to criticize Trump and his administration’s policies while treating some candidates – like Bernie Sanders – as heroes. The following are just a few examples of NBC’s debate moderators most liberal moments since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, as culled from the MRC’s archives:
On Wednesday and Thursday NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo will host the first Democratic primary debates. If they are to match what their CNBC colleagues did with the Republican candidates in 2015, they should ask questions designed to humiliate, badger and paint the Democratic field as not ready for prime time, cartoonish, out-of-touch extremists.
Even though the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have championed some of the most radical policy proposals ever seen in American politics, the vast majority of this year’s coverage (202 stories, or 92%) has failed to include any ideological label. Instead, reporters have eagerly touted adjectives describing the candidates’ race, gender, ethnicity and sexual identity, applauding the group as “crowded and diverse,” “historically diverse,” and the “most diverse” group ever to run.
On Wednesday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law a new abortion bill that is being called more radical than New York’s law that was passed in January. So far none of the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) have reported on the Illinois law that – among other things – does away with that state’s ban on partial birth abortions.
TV news coverage of President Donald Trump was as hostile (92% negative) in May as it was in the months immediately before Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report in March. And despite the fact that Mueller concluded there was no campaign conspiracy with Russia, TV news delivered three times as many stories talking about "impeachment" as before the report was issued...
According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, most Americans wildly underestimate the number of illegal aliens entering the United States each month, and one reason could be the news media's reluctance to disclose the real statistics...
A new Hill/HarrisX poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden taking a huge 32 point lead over his competitors in the 2020 Democratic primary race. One potential reason: television news coverage that once was shared among many of the candidates is now focused almost solely on Biden. Despite the presence of more than 20 announced candidates, Biden was rewarded with by far the lion’s share of the coverage: 77% of candidate airtime (52 minutes) in April, ten times more than his nearest competitor.
Although the Mueller report did not recommend any charges against the President, liberal journalists on cable and broadcast networks spent Thursday suggesting to audiences that impeachment was imminent, if not inevitable. Throughout Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, liberal talking heads on cable and broadcast news networks mentioned impeachment an astonishing 309 times during their coverage the of the newly-released Mueller report.
Saturday marks 20 years since the tragic Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Liberal journalists have already begun their retrospectives that included requisite attacks on the NRA and gun owners. The following is a look back at the most biased and ugliest broadsides in the weeks following the April 20, 1999 Columbine shooting:.
Former porn star lawyer Michael Avenatti is back in the headlines after being indicted Thursday on 36 charges ranging from fraud to tax dodging. Incidentally, this is the same Michael Avenatti whom broadcast and cable news networks have hosted a whopping 254 times over the past year, according to the MRC's latest count of the spotlight-loving attorney's televised escapades...
If House Democrats are sinking to a new low by using their subpoena power to rummage through the President's personal tax returns, you wouldn't know it by the way they have been treated on CNN over the past few days. Hosts on the liberal cable network have routinely lobbed softballs at Democratic interviewees, while challenges to the legitimacy of their quest see the President’s taxes were few and far between...
After Attorney General William Barr released the key findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month-long investigation, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts showered Donald Trump with good press (80% positive) for the first time since he became President. But the good news for the White House only lasted for two days; after that, the networks resumed their lopsidedly hostile (79% negative) coverage of the President and his administration.
Many in the media remain in denial about the Mueller report findings, as they’ve collectively screamed “Nothing is over, until we decide it is!” From clinging to ongoing Democratic investigations to spouting conspiracy theories about a cover-up, liberal journalists and hosts have spent the last few days refusing to accept there was nothing to their precious “Russian Collusion” dreams. The following are the 10 worst examples of liberals in denial as they curse the Mueller Report conclusions:
From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (the last night before special counsel Robert Mueller sent his report to the Attorney General), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage. Now that the investigation they relentlessly touted has ended with an outcome favorable to the President they despise, those networks seem ripe for a “reckoning.”
In the past few weeks we’ve seen the media get excited for Beto O’Rourke while also blaming Donald Trump for the actions of a crazed shooter. Vanity Fair sent Joe Hagan to pen a cover story on Beto that left the writer giddy about a “gleam in his eye” as the “too innocent to be a politician” began his presidential campaign. Conversely, journalists raged at Donald Trump’s reaction to the shooting in New Zealand, a tragedy they all but blamed Trump for. CNN host John Berman indicted Trump for using the same “language” of the killer. The following are just a few of the worst moments of media...
Failed Democratic Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke announced his presidential candidacy today, despite his last political campaign ending in a loss to Ted Cruz in 2018. But who needs a stretch of political victories to build momentum for a presidential run when you have gale force winds – in the form of liberal media hype – behind your back?
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has spent the past week using his evening show The Situation Room as a platform for Democratic lawmakers to plug their numerous investigations of President Trump. Blitzer, a veteran reporter and host on the network, is not a name that immediately springs to mind when one thinks of biased or outlandish statements from CNN journalists. However, the many interviews he has conducted with politicians on the Hill — a staple of his show — tell a story of bias through careful and deliberate framing of facts.
According to published reports, new CBS News President Susan Zirinsky is considering a shake up at the CBS Evening News barely 15 months after the network installed Jeff Glor as anchor. If true, it would mark the departure of the least anti-Trump of the Big Three anchormen, just as the 2020 campaign is heating up. Compared to his predecessor Scott Pelley’s belligerent Trump bashing, Glor has struck a more neutral tone in its political coverage and avoided the hyperbolic coverage of his competitors.
Phony racially-motivated attacks and Democrats being caught in blackface were just some of the controversies that liberal journalists and celerities actually blamed on Donald Trump and his Wall-endorsing, red hat-wearing, supporters this past month.
In just 35 days, the partial government shutdown generated nearly five hours of coverage on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. By a six-to-one margin, network reporters framed the shutdown as the fault of President Trump, not the Democrats. Out of 297 minutes of total shutdown coverage, just 27% was devoted to the debate over the border wall — far less time than was given to TSA workers calling in sick, delays at airports and the personal plight of government workers who had their paychecks delayed.
Before special counsel Robert Mueller rained all over the media’s parade, liberal journalists spent much of Friday gleefully touting a now-discredited Buzzfeed story alleging how: “President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.” Here’s a video re-cap of how the media let their wishful thinking get the better of them on Friday.
On Friday, the New York Times published an article revealing that the FBI opened a probe in 2017 to investigate whether President Donald Trump was acting as a Russian agent. CNN hosts spent more than three hours over the weekend brandishing the report as “devastating” news for Trump, but gave only a minuscule portion of the coverage included any reference to the disclosure by the Times that “no evidence has emerged publicly” which implicated the President.
At the midpoint of Donald Trump’s first term, the establishment media’s obvious hostility shows no signs of relenting: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive, matching the historically bad press we documented in 2017. But polls show this negative coverage has had no discernible impact on the public’s attitudes toward the President. Instead, the media's partisan approach has earned them high marks from Democrats, while alienating most Republicans...
Democrats take control of the House of Representatives today, but you don’t hear journalists instructing them to “show that they can govern” by finding ways to “compromise” with President Trump, as you do when Republicans are poised to gain power. “Opposing the President is not a policy,” NBC’s Matt Lauer lectured New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the November 5, 2014 Today.
This week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2018. Today, we finish the series with some of the most obnoxious celebrity quotes of 2018. TBS’s Full Frontal host Samantha Bee was so enraged at Ivanka Trump she hurled one of the worst epithets you could at a woman, as she called Donald Trump’s daughter a “feckless” c-word.
This week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2018. Today, we're reviewing the most idiotic quotes of the year. Journalists making the cut this year include Chris Matthews wanting “thought and prayers” to be “outlawed,” The New York Times telling readers that communist theorist Karl Marx was “right,” and CNN’s Jim Sciutto scaring his audience about climate change, as he feared we were being “slowly burned to death.”...
This week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2018. Today, it’s a look at the media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome as we present the most over-the-top attacks on President Donald Trump. When he wasn’t being compared to tyrants like Benito Mussolini, he was being branded a traitor who sold out America to Vladimir Putin. And of course he was repeatedly tarred as a hateful racist.
In 2018 there was a torrent of ugliness directed at conservatives. Vice President Mike Pence was disgustingly derided as a “dangerous” Christian with a “mental illness” on ABC’s The View. When White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was hounded by leftist activists at a Virginia restaurant, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin praised them as she condemned: “Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press.”
As 2018 comes to a close, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the year. In today’s installment, we have the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons. Examples include MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell gushing over Barack Obama: “His mind is too supple, too complex, too rich compared to my own.”
The media’s current appreciation for the 41st President stands in sharp contrast to how they covered his presidential campaigns and his administration. When George H. W. Bush was still in the arena, liberal reporters were among his most vociferous critics, who deplored his campaign tactics, accused him of exacerbating racial tensions, and bashed him for failing to adopt liberal policy positions.
It’s been 18 years since a presidential election was clogged and stalled by a recount after a close finish in Florida, and now it’s happening again after Republicans led the election night tallies for Senator and Governor in the state. This time, the national media are scoffing at complaints that Democratic election officials could be seeking to overturn the will of the voters. Back in 2000, those same outlets dripped with suspicion that Florida’s Republican Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was conspiring to steal that election away from Democrat Al Gore.
Celebrities that are sick of Donald Trump and the GOP have spent the few weeks leading up to today’s midterms crying about the “raving lunatic” President as they stoked their liberal fans to get to the polls to halt the GOP’s “nascent fascism.” Comedian Rosie O’Donnell even called for a coup: “I want to send the military to the White House to get him.” The following are just some of the worst examples of celebrities losing their minds in the closing days before the midterms.
This year, with Republicans in control of the White House, House and Senate, journalists are actively electioneering on behalf of Democrats, as a way to put a check on the power of President Trump. But eight years ago, when Democrats held both the House and Senate going into President Obama’s first midterm elections, the media were distressed that liberal power might be diluted, and upset that voters failed to appreciate the tremendous “victories” and “amazing legislative agenda” that Obama and the Democrats had accomplished.
With just one week to go before the 2018 midterm elections, the broadcast networks are heavily spinning their campaign coverage against the Republicans, even as President Trump’s campaign activities have received more airtime than all of the individual Senate, House, and gubernatorial contests combined.
On network evening broadcasts, the President and his administration have received virtually no credit for this achievement. Since Inauguration Day (January 20, 2017), the three network evening newscasts have spent more than 10,000 minutes on the Trump presidency, and only 33 minutes (0.33%) involved the administration's handling of the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria...
As the midterms fast approach, there are a bunch of Democrats who find themselves embroiled in scandals and controversies. But if you only got your news from the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks, you’ve probably never heard about them. From Texas Senate Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke lying about his DUI arrest to DNC chair Keith Ellison being accused of domestic violence, the following is a list of Democratic controversies that the nets are keeping their audiences (for the most part) in the dark about:
Over the summer, the broadcast networks continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a President in TV news history — 92 percent negative, vs. just eight percent positive. Nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency focused on five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia, while bright spots such as the booming economy accounted for less than one percent of total coverage.
Just imagine if there was video of Brett Kavanaugh groping a flight attendant – the footage would be all over the network and cable news shows right now. But when footage of President Bill Clinton grabbing a flight attendant’s knee was revealed, it was only a small part of a 1998 ABC World News Tonight segment that praised then Clinton aide/confidante Bruce Lindsey.
During the past three weeks, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has received a deluge of news coverage accusing him of vile crimes, including attempted rape and even organizing gang rapes. While these charges did not originate with the news media, the lack of satisfactory corroborating evidence should have caused ethical reporters to refrain from gratuitously repeating allegations that painted Kavanaugh in a monstrous light. But this is not what happened.
Jane Mayer made the network rounds, this week, promoting her New Yorker hit piece on Brett Kavanaugh, but a look at her past demonstrates why her work should be taken with biggest grains of salt as she has become a go-to author for partisan attack stories.
We’ve seen the media and the Democrats use this playbook before. When Justice Clarence Thomas was well on his way to being confirmed in 1991, the Democrats brought forth Anita Hill to accuse Thomas of sexual harassment, in a last ditch attempt to derail his nomination. And while it remains to be seen if the media turn the Brett Kavanaugh nomination process into a similar circus it’s instructive to see what they did back then.
It’s not as if we haven’t seen this before. Twenty-seven years ago, a last-minute accusation of sexual harassment prompted the Senate to re-open Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings; the ‘he-said, she-said’ confrontation was a media spectacle, including prime-time coverage on the broadcast networks. When it was over, the Media Research Center analyzed the coverage, and found journalists criticized Republicans for being too harsh on Anita Hill, while criticizing Democrats for being too soft on Thomas.
An MRC study of all ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of the President this year finds reporters used highly-charged words to paint him as unhinged or out-of-control. Viewers heard Trump variously described as “furious” (17 times), “fuming” (14), “outraged” (8), “venting” (5), “infuriated” (5), “livid” (3), “enraged” (3), “seething” (2), or just plain-old “angry” (23). The President was also “on the warpath,” “volcanic,” “unglued,” “spoiling for a fight” and even “went ballistic,” according to reporters at various times this year.
While the networks have been obsessed with alleged Russian interference to aid Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign they have – so far – completely ignored a bombshell report that a Google employee tried to help Hillary Clinton win.
While there have been many respectful tributes to John McCain in the media in the past few days, there was a time when the liberal press weren’t always supportive of the war hero and independent-minded Senator from Arizona — particularly when he was getting in the way of their progressive agenda. A look back at McCain’s relationship with the press, over the decades, shows it was complicated at best.
By far, the biggest news story of the Trump presidency has been the Russia investigation. As of August 15, the three broadcast network evening newscasts have devoted a combined 1,854 minutes to the probe, or nearly one-fifth (19.6%) of all of their Trump news. Yet virtually none of that airtime (just 62 minutes, or 3.3%) has been spent scrutinizing Robert Mueller’s investigation — a big shift from twenty years ago, when the networks made Ken Starr’s conduct the focus of much of their coverage.
President Donald Trump’s “cataclysmic” pick of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and his act of “treason” at his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin prompted the media to turn up their outrage volume to 11 this month. The following are the worst liberal outbursts over the last month from lefty journalists and celebrities:
President Trump won’t officially announce his latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court until this evening, but it’s already easy to predict the liberal media’s spin. As with all recent Republican nominees, reporters will repeatedly label them as “conservative,” which will nicely reinforce the Democrats’ strategy to paint them as outside “the mainstream.” But when Democratic Presidents announce their Supreme Court nominees, those same reporters can’t find the words to call those choices “liberal.”
From President Donald Trump’s policy of separating the children of illegal immigrants to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, there was a lot for lefties in the media and Hollywood to lose their heads over this month. Anchors and reporters depicted the “despot” Trump and those who voted for him as Nazis that were making the Statue of Liberty weep. The following are the worst liberal outbursts over the last month from lefty journalists and celebrities.
The hype for James Comey’s book tour (set to launch on ABC Sunday evening an hour-long George Stephanopoulos special) began last November 2 when CBS’s Gayle King teased it during an interview with the former FBI director. And while liberal journalists are clearly hoping for Comey to dish dirt on President Trump, there was a time when they hammered him as a partisan hack whose investigation into then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal was sneaky sabotage of an all-but-certain Democratic victory in 2016.
The liberal media are up in arms over President Trump’s labeling of the investigation into Russian hacking and the 2016 presidential campaign a “witch hunt.” All three broadcast networks led their Thursday evening newscasts with Trump’s use of the phrase, with NBC’s Lester Holt saying Trump was “lashing out.” Yet long before Donald Trump arrived in Washington, liberal reporters themselves employed the “witch hunt” slogan to discredit investigations into their Democratic friends, especially Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But now that Trump uses the same tactic, it’s somehow...
All this week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2017. Monday, we presented some of the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons, and yesterday we showcased some of this year’s nastiest attacks on Republicans or conservatives. Today it’s a look at all of the over-the-top attacks on President Donald Trump.
In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the liberal media immediately launched another gun grab attempt by exploiting the horrific tragedy that occurred in Parkland, Florida. Network and cable journalists blamed gun owners and gun-rights organizations for the “slaughter of our children.” The following is a collection (so far) of the media’s ugliest attacks on gun rights supporters in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
Network and cable channels couldn’t get enough of Michael Avenatti, granting Stormy Daniels’ personal attorney a whopping 162 interviews in the past 12 weeks (March 7 through May 30). But those outlets are now going to have to find a new pundit to embarrass Donald Trump with, as the judge presiding over the porn star’s case against former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen has ordered Avenatti to stop his “publicity tour.”
In covering the President’s proposed budget this week, network reporters unanimously claimed it “cut” or even “slashed” federal spending. An MRC analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news coverage since Monday (May 22) finds that not a single reporter ever told viewers that overall federal spending would actually RISE under President Trump’s planned budget — just not as much as forecast under the budget baseline Trump inherited from President Obama back in January.
In another baffling display of disconnect, CBS News blamed President Trump’s low poll numbers on Republican voters being pro-ObamaCare. During the December 27 CBS This Morning, National Correspondent Chip Reid announced that Trump’s push to repeal ObamaCare “could hurt many of his own supporters.”
A Media Research Center analysis of the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts in January and February found ten times more negative comments (91%) about the President than positive statements (just 9%). Out of 851 total minutes of airtime devoted to the administration, the networks spent almost one-fourth of it (204 minutes, or 24%) on the Russia investigation, eclipsing other major topics such as the economy, immigration reform, and even the gun debate.
Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has been met with skepticism from liberal journalists with the likes of CBS correspondent Bianna Golodryga railing: “The self-proclaimed dealmaker in chief has so far proven to be more of a deal breaker, tearing up international deals.” But this is a far cry from the liberal media’s reaction to Barack Obama’s December 2014 deal with Cuban dictator Raul Castro. The following are the most exuberant reactions from the liberal media to Obama’s initial announcement of a thaw with Cuba back in December 2014, as culled from the MRC’s...
A Media Research Center study of every broadcast network evening newscast in the five weeks since the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller on May 17 found a whopping 353 minutes of airtime devoted to the Russia probe, or 55 percent of all coverage of the Trump presidency during those weeks. The study also found one-third (34%) of the networks’ Russia coverage was based on anonymous sources, some of which later proved erroneous.
All this week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2017. Monday, we presented the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons; on Tuesday, we showcased some of this year’s nastiest attacks on Republicans or conservatives; and yesterday, we highlighted the media’s freak-out over President Donald Trump. Today a look at the stupidest quotes of the year.
It’s been nine days since Hillary Clinton, on a visit to India, disparaged the voters who elected Donald Trump as President in 2016. This weekend, some Democrats openly broke with Clinton over the comments, while the ex-candidate herself felt the need to engage in a bit of backpedaling in a Facebook message posted Saturday afternoon. Given the blowback, you’d imagine that the broadcast networks would have found at least a few moments for this controversy. You’d be wrong.
Outraged anchors and correspondents at ABC, CBS and NBC attacked the Trump administration for separating children from parents at the border as they overwhelmed their Monday morning and evening news programs with a massive 94 minutes of coverage on the detainment policy. Overall, in just six days of coverage (June 13 through June 18) the nets have flooded their broadcasts with almost three hours (176 minutes) of emotional segments that included pictures of crying children and accompanying anger from correspondents and pundits alike.
It’s already started: CBS’s Jane Pauley rolled out the red carpet for Hillary Clinton, in her first book tour stop promoting What Happened. The CBS Sunday Morning host treated the 2016 loser with kid gloves as she tenderly laid up softball after softball, feeling Hillary’s pain. Of course, this is the kind of book tour treatment Clinton has grown accustomed to, whether she was hawking a book as First Lady, first year Senator or presidential candidate.
All this week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of 2017. Monday, we presented the most outrageous examples of journalists fawning over liberal or left-wing icons; on Tuesday, we showcased some of this year’s nastiest attacks on Republicans or conservatives; Wednesday, we highlighted the media’s freak-out over President Donald Trump; and yesterday was a look at the stupidest quotes of the year. Today, we finish the series with some of the most outlandish celebrity quotes of 2017.
At the Jeffrey Zucker-led CNN, they can be trusted to go all-out whenever they find a news story that they deem worth obsessing over. Whether it was the missing Malaysian plane or Sam Nunberg, CNN has proven itself incapable of covering more than one topic at a time. On Wednesday, CNN’s primetime programming showed that with over 149 minutes pushing the Trump scandal involving porn star Stormy Daniels and another 86 minutes on other Trump-related scandals.
The 17-year-long war in Afghanistan continues, with nearly 15,000 U.S. troops currently deployed to support the fight against Taliban and ISIS forces, but you’d barely know it from watching any of the three broadcast network evening newscasts. The three newscasts combined have aired barely 32 minutes on the war this year, or a paltry one-third of one percent of their total evening news airtime.
One theme of Hillary Clinton’s book tour is that news media bias helped tip the election in favor of Donald Trump, but no reasonable person could suggest that political reporters created a landscape more favorable to Trump than to her. And it’s silly of her to say the news media were one of the causes of her defeat.
The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks engaged in a feeding frenzy over Michael Wolff’s gossip-filled book, as they ate up the salacious details in Fire and Fury. From January 3 through January 9, the networks stuffed their evening and morning programs with over two hours of coverage of the Wolff book and the subsequent fallout for former Donald Trump aide Stephen Bannon.
Put simply, CNN has a porn problem. For the so-called “Facts First” network, the President’s alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels has become their new missing Malaysian plane with exhaustive coverage and speculation. CNN took it to another level on Saturday, devoting roughly 41 minutes to her Friday performance at a Florida strip club.
With September’s news coverage now in the record books, the latest Media Research Center analysis finds TV’s hostility to the Trump presidency continues unabated. According to our analysts, the President received 92% bad press, vs. just 8% good press on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows last month.
A Media Research Center study of every broadcast evening news story about the Trump administration in 2017 found the new President was by far the biggest story of the year, accounting for one out of every three minutes of evening news airtime; the tone of coverage was incessantly hostile: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive; and more than two-fifths of evening news coverage of the President (43%) focused on controversies, not policies, with the Russia investigation alone accounting for one-fifth of all Trump coverage (1,234 minutes).
NewsBusters analyzed MSNBC’s coverage of the first eight hours that followed after both the Flynn and McCabe stories broke. Within these designated periods, the network spent a total of 379 minutes (78.9 percent of the full eight hours) discussing Flynn’s alleged transgression, but only 21 minutes (4.4 percent) on McCabe’s, amounting to roughly 18 times more coverage of Flynn.
Longtime ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross is leaving the network seven months after he notoriously tanked the stock market with a false on-air report that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn would testify against the President. But that wasn’t the first, or second, or even third time that Ross’s investigative scoops have blown up on ABC News. Let’s review:
Over the past several months, journalists have had no qualms about attacking President Trump on a deeply personal level, calling him an “embarrassing” “unhinged” “liar,” a “sociopath” and a “madman” presiding over a “malignant presidency.” But eight years ago, many of these same reporters were offended at criticism of Barack Obama and his policies, scorning the “mean,” “ugly,” “offensive” “vitriol” and “idiot talk” hurled at the last President during the same months of his term.
Yesterday, we reported on the massive amount of coverage that the broadcast network evening newscasts devoted to the Trump administration in 2017, nearly all of it (90%) negative. While topics such as the Russia investigation and other controversies were given extremely heavy coverage — more than 43 hours of coverage on just these three newscasts — the networks were nearly silent when it came to a number of Trump administration accomplishments. This article documents some key examples.
Saturday’s “March for Our Lives” represents the culmination of more than a month of the liberal media’s seemingly endless parade of soundbites and interviews featuring the strident and, at times, vicious anti-gun statements from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, teachers, parents and their allies in the Democratic Party. Looking just at the airtime of soundbites in these stories and interview segments, gun rights opponents received 71.5 minutes, roughly eleven times more coverage than pro-gun rights voices (6.5 minutes).
In the twelve weeks since the party conventions concluded in late July, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has received significantly more broadcast network news coverage than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but nearly all of that coverage (91%) has been hostile, according to a new study by the Media Research Center (MRC). The networks spent far more airtime focusing on the personal controversies involving Trump (440 minutes) than about similar controversies involving Clinton (185 minutes).
On Friday and over the weekend, ABC, CBS and NBC reacted with their typical anti-Trump fervor to the President’s decision to end federal subsidies of insurance companies through ObamaCare, but only a meager portion of broadcast news coverage — barely three percent — tipped viewers off to the fact those payments were unconstitutional in the first place.
Efforts by President Donald Trump and Republicans to secure the border and let Americans keep more of their money sent the liberal media into hysterics over the past month. On MSNBC, the President was called a “white supremacist” who was a “danger to non-white people” for wanting to tighten immigration enforcement. The following is a collection of the most heinous outbursts from liberal journalists and celebrities over the past month.
The news media’s obviously insatiable appetite for scandal news surrounding Republican President Donald Trump is sharply at odds with their aversion to covering such stories about Democratic President Bill Clinton two decades ago. From March 7 through March 25, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts aired 23 reports about various allegations involving President Trump, totaling 40 minutes of airtime. None of Clinton's accusers ever had that kind of media attention lavished on their claims...
Since the 1980s, the well-worn liberal playbook is to claim that Republican appointees to the Supreme Court should be voted down as ideologues who are outside the judicial mainstream. The establishment media aids this tactic by often tagging GOP nominees as “conservative,” while ignoring — or even disputing — the liberal bent of Democratic nominees to the Court. True to form, ABC, CBS and NBC’s morning and evening broadcasts branded Judge Brett Kavanaugh a “conservative” a total of eleven times in the first 24 hours since his nomination by President Trump.
During the campaign, the liberal news media did everything they could to prevent Donald Trump’s election, but he won anyway. Now, journalists are trashing the way Trump is handling his transition, as well as his early Cabinet picks. But eight years ago, viewers heard a very different tone coming from the media, as journalists celebrated the election of Barack Obama, cheered the “brain power” of the “team of geniuses” he was assembling for his Cabinet, and tingled over how “cool” Obama seemed as he assumed the responsibilities of office.
Here’s one top takeaway from network news coverage in 2017: Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton. From January 20 through October 20, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have aired 1,000 minutes of coverage of the Trump/Russia/collusion conspiracy theories; since The Hill broke details of a Clinton/Russia/Uranium scandal on October 17, those same broadcasts have generated only 20 seconds of coverage.
As many as five months worth of texts between two anti-Trump officials at the FBI are missing, but ABC and NBC have yet to report on this stunning development. The missing texts story first broke on Sunday night (at that point it was thought to be only 400 missing messages) and while Fox News was on top of story, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) stories had completely ignored it – until CBS This Morning finally arrived on it in a three-minute Paula Reid segment on Tuesday’s show.
Traditionally, the news media have demonstrated great interest in movies with social or political themes, but so far Chappaquiddick has been completely ignored by CBS This Morning, while NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America have each featured only a single segment about the film.
Chris Matthews joined the chorus of apocalyptic media takes on Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin, but it wasn’t that long ago he mocked Mitt Romney’s warnings about Russia back in 2012.
With the Democratic Party defeated, ObamaCare set for repeal, and incoming President Donald Trump poised to revoke a host of his executive orders, Obama’s actual legacy will likely fall far short of what his media fan club once imagined. But one aspect of his place in history seems secure: Barack Obama has been the lucky recipient of more biased, positive “news” media coverage than any other President in history.
Exactly one year ago today, Americans elected Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. But in the days leading up to the election, the establishment news media made it seem as if a Trump victory was unthinkable, as they touted their own polls and predictions as if they were facts. As reporters now thump their chests and label themselves as “facts first,” they should look back with some humility at their performance in last year’s campaign.
Early Thursday night, the White House released the parameters of an immigration plan being sent to Congress, which included legalizating 1.8 million illegal immigrants. However, this dramatic attempt at a compromise fell on deaf ears at CNN. From 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern, CNN devoted an astonishing 11 times more coverage to the Trump-Russia probe, discrediting the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page scandal, and obsessing over porn star Stormy Daniels than the immigration plan.
A funny thing has happened since the Left began its campaign to drive Fox News host Laura Ingraham off the air: Her ratings are up, a lot — by more than 20 percent compared to her last week on the air before the current controversy began.
In just three nights (July 16-July 18), CNN swamped their primetime shows with over 7 hours of coverage – almost all of it critical – of Donald Trump’s Helsinki Summit with Vladimir Putin, including CNN’s hosts and guests speculating that Trump had been compromised by the Russian president and committed treason.
When Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign on June 16, 2015, the savants in the news media weren’t just skeptical — they were openly disdainful of the man who will be sworn in as America’s 45th President at noon tomorrow. Reporters sniffed that Trump’s campaign was a “carnival show” which threatened to turn the GOP primary race into “a joke.” CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin called Trump a “fool,” NBC’s Chuck Todd blasted him as “a political streaker,” and pundit after pundit insisted the real estate mogul had no chance of winning.
For the past four days, the establishment media have provided intensive coverage of the scandal involving Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, with reporters repeating the damning accusations against the candidate and the “mounting pressure” for Moore to quit the race. The media’s reaction to Moore makes their double standard on scandals all the more glaring: Since early September, a sitting United States Senator has been on trial for corruption involving the abuse of his office, and the media have essentially buried the story.
The FBI was caught off guard Monday when Deputy Director Andrew McCabe decided to kick off his retirement early and resigned his post with little fanfare. Speculation swirled over why he chose that day to call it quits but the liberal networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) decided only one person was really to blame: President Trump and his desire to obstruct justice. That despite the fact that other close sources cited a harsh Inspector General investigation report coming down the pike.
Today marks the official release of fired FBI director James Comey’s new book A Higher Loyalty and the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks already have done their part to boost its sales, packing a total of two hours, 24 minutes in five days of coverage on their evening and morning news programs.
During the 18 months of the Trump presidency, immigration has received more airtime on the three broadcast evening news shows than any other policy topic. The networks’ coverage has been relentlessly hostile to the administration (92% negative, just 8% positive), largely because these newscasts have framed nearly all of their coverage around the plight of those adversely affected by the administration’s enforcement agenda, and have virtually ignored law enforcement or anyone harmed by illegal immigration.
A new American President is always a big story, but TV news is obsessed with the Trump administration — and not in a good way. In the first 30 days (January 20 to February 18), our analysts determined that the President and his team were the subject of 16 hours of coverage on just the Big Three evening newscasts, or more than half (54%) of all of the news coverage during this period. And while most new presidents enjoy a media honeymoon, the tone of Trump’s coverage was nearly as hostile (88% negative) as we found during last year’s presidential campaign (91% negative).
Both Republicans and Democrats have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, but in the month of November, ABC, CBS and NBC spent twice as much time telling viewers about the Republicans’ problems. Nearly two-thirds of this coverage (4 hours, 27 minutes) focused on Republican politicians, compared to 2 hours, 6 minutes spent on the Democrats, a greater than two-to-one disparity.
When Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a January 11 press conference, belittled the $1,000 bonus Walmart workers that were going to get (via the tax cut) as mere “crumbs” CNN and MSNBC offered the elitist comment a mere 17 seconds in a week’s worth of coverage.
As James Comey’s book exploded onto the scene, CNN pumped the breaks on its “Facts First” campaign to revisit perhaps the most salacious claim contained in the Steele dossier. Specifically, the dossier alleged that Donald Trump had paid ladies of the night to micturate upon one another in Moscow, and that the Russian government had taped the horrific escapade. To date, no aspect of these allegations has been substantiated in any capacity.
With Republicans set to make another run at repealing and replacing ObamaCare this week, look for the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) to blame conservatives, specifically, the House Freedom Caucus for any sort of obstruction to getting a deal done. In 30 days of health care debate coverage (March 7 through April 5), the broadcast networks consistently framed it as a fight between unreasonable conservatives versus more moderate Republicans and Senate Democrats by overwhelmingly applying ideological labels to one side of the argument.
Listening to liberal journalists denounce Roy Moore, Al Franken and John Conyers, you’d think the media had zero tolerance for politicians with a known history of sexual misconduct. But the plain truth is the media have been complicit in normalizing, even justifying, such behavior for decades – if it helped protect the cause of big government liberalism.
To create hype for his network’s Olympics coverage, NBC’s Keir Simmons decided it would be a good idea to play bumper cars in a North Korean amusement park. “They’re ruthless, these guys,” Simmons joked in the June 6 Today segment, about the other bumper car drivers – in a country that is legitimately ruthless to its own people. Not once in the segment did Simmons use that word to describe Kim Jong Un’s regime. But this isn’t the first time that NBC News has run a report that bordered dangerously close on propaganda for a foreign dictatorship.
CNN has exhibited a fetish for the Stormy Daniels story, particularly for her Trump-smacking lawyer, Michael Avenatti. In less than two months (from March 7 to April 30), Avenatti has been a guest on CNN a total of 59 times – an average of more than once per day.
Following the arrest of Republican Congressman Chris Collins, the broadcast networks once again showcased their partisan double standard when it comes to corruption allegations against members of Congress. Collins’s arrest on Wednesday on insider trading charges resulted in a deluge of coverage, over 18 minutes in less than 24 hours. But in 2015 and 2016, ABC, CBS and NBC buried the indictment, trial and conviction of two Democratic representatives, offering absolutely no coverage of the scandal surrounding Congresswoman Corrine Brown (convicted of fraud) and a paltry 68 seconds to Chaka...
CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley is plainly the most anti-Trump of the Big Three anchormen, having gone out of his way since the Inauguration to slam Trump's “falsehoods,” even asking if the President “is having difficulty with rationality.” For taking on the President in such a direct way, Pelley has become something of a rock star among his fellow journalists...
NBC News still hasn’t reported on the sexual harassment accusations against Democratic Congressman Ruben Kihuen, but ABC took things a step farther. ABC isn’t just ignoring Kihuen: the network buried its own bombshell scoop on him. In an interview with ABC News Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce that was posted on the network’s website but never made the cut for television, Kihuen accused Democratic leadership for being opportunistic in calling for his resignation.
It has been a week since the disturbing allegations came to light that Rob Porter, a now-former White House staffer close to the President, had a history of domestic abuse against his two ex-wives. And during that time, the evening newscasts of the major network news outlets (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had dedicated almost a combined hour to the story. But when it came to similar accusations against congressional Democrats, they couldn’t be bothered.
The Media Research Center studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the President from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative — precisely the same hostile tone we documented in 2017. But unlike last year, when the RealClearPolitics average depicted a slow but steady erosion in the President’s job approval numbers, the public has apparently warmed to Trump in 2018, even as the networks are as frosty as ever.
Just a few days after CBS’s Stephen Colbert unleashed a vulgar tirade against President Trump, a new study has documented just how unfriendly late night TV has been to the new Commander-in-Chief. The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University counted an incredible 1,060 jokes directed against Trump during the President’s first 100 days in office. That’s more than ten times as many barbs as aimed at all Democrats — combined — during the same period (95), and considerably more than both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton received during the entire first year of their presidencies...
Liberal reporters are scandalized by what they say is President Trump’s effort to “discredit” and “undermine” special counsel Robert Mueller, worried that it could presage an attempt to “remove Mueller, or end his investigation.” But when President Bill Clinton was being investigated by Ken Starr, journalists applauded Democratic and White House attacks on the independent counsel, and frequently joined in themselves.
Like their counterparts at CNN and MSNBC, many news outlets were quick to promote anti-Trump protests in New York City on November 12, 2016 – and in doing so became unwitting promoters of Russian propaganda. An indictment handed down on February 16 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed that this protest, as well as one in Charlotte, NC on November 19, 2016, was organized by Russian operatives.
In the past ten weeks, lawyer Michael Avenatti, who is representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, has been interviewed a staggering 147 times on broadcast and cable news shows. More than half of those interviews (74) were on CNN, which almost certainly makes Avenatti the most ubiquitous guest in the network’s history. No guest — not Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders in 2016, nor Adam Schiff in 2017 — received anything close to the outpouring of free media coverage that CNN has bequeathed to Avenatti.
CNN claims it’s right down the middle, somewhere between the left-wing MSNBC and the more conservative-friendly Fox News Channel. But an MRC study of an entire day of CNN’s coverage shows the network spent almost all of its time covering the Trump presidency, with a heavily skewed roster of anti-Trump guests and on-air commentators.
As yesterday’s throwdown in the White House press room made clear, relations between the President and the press corps are as bad as they have ever been during the Trump administration. But as the Media Research Center has been documenting all year, the media have approached the Trump presidency with unrelenting hostility. Our latest numbers show that coverage of Trump on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts in September, October and November was more than 90 percent negative.
In the past month liberal journalists have blamed “domestic terrorist” enabling Republicans for the Parkland, Florida school shooting tragedy, depicted Donald Trump as an “ethnic cleansing” “dictator” and decried Fox News as a “racist outfit” that is a “noxious stain on American society.” On the other hand, the media fell in love with North Korea’s “first sister” of Kim Jong-un as they contrasted the Winter Olympics appearance of the “prim” “political princess” against “bully” Mike Pence.
CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta has suggested President Trump is a “racist,” while whining that Trump’s complaints about press bias were doing “real damage to the First Amendment,” speculating that some day we might see “a dead journalist on the side of the highway, because of the rhetoric coming out of the White House.” Then on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Acosta said this about his Trump coverage: “Listen, when I covered Barack Obama, I was just as tough on him. People might not believe that.” Let’s investigate.
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Mitt Romney’s vote to convict President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge of abuse of power won him a bunch of new fans amongst the liberal press. CNN’s Jim Acosta and John Avlon swooned over the Utah Senator’s “Profile in Courage” in standing up against Trump and his fellow Republicans. This is a far cry from the treatment Romney received when he was the GOP presidential nominee looking to take down their hero Barack Obama in 2012.
All this week, NewsBusters is recounting the most obnoxious liberal bias of the decade. Today, we finish the series with the silliest analysis of the decade.