CBS, ABC and NBC give Trump 93% negative coverage from August to October: report

Mainstream media networks CBS, ABC and NBC have largely forgone coverage of Donald Trump and his competition for the 2024 presidential nomination in the Republican Party, instead electing to have the vast majority of their reporting on Trump focusing on the inditments against him.



An analysis of coverage of all the GOP presidential candidates by the Media Research Center (MRC) found that the big three outlets talked about Trump for 380 minutes during the three months of August, September and October, marking about 12 times more than the 30 minutes they spent discussing his main rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 93 percent of the coverage of Trump by these outlets was negative, per the analysis. 

 

74 percent of all airtime on the big three dedicated to GOP candidate coverage from January to July, was dedicated to Trump, and that amount increased to 87 percent during August, September and October.

In that same period of time, former Vice President Mike Pence received just 14 minutes of coverage, while businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had only about four minutes each. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley took an even more pitiful two minutes of coverage, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) got just one minute. 

Trump was given 82 minutes of coverage in October alone, again 93 percent of that was negative, with Pence getting just two minutes after he pulled out of the race on Oct. 28, according to MRC. 97 percent of the coverage of GOP candidates went to Trump.

The report also found that 320 minutes, or 84 percent of all coverage on the former president during these months surrounded his legal cases. Just 27 minutes pertained to his campaign or policy issues. 

MRC explained that to calculate the percentage of negative spin, it "tallied all explicitly positive and negative comments about the candidates from anchors, reporters, and non-partisan sources such as experts, voters."

The outlet said that from "August 1 to October 31, we tallied just 41 positive statements about Donald Trump, vs. 511 negative statements, for a negative spin score of 93%. This compares to 90% negative during the first seven months of the year."