The Media Research Center’s shoddy and biased “media research” never stops — especially when it comes to protecting Donald Trump from the consequences of his own behavior. Rich Noyes wrote in a Jan. 11 post:
As actual voting is set to begin in the 2024 presidential election, a new study by the Media Research Center (MRC) finds the three broadcast evening newscasts’ fixation with bashing Donald Trump has meant both his fellow candidates and substantive policy issues have been shunted to the sidelines.
MRC analysts looked at all coverage of the Republican candidates on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from January 1 through December 31, 2023, including weekends.
key findings:
[…]■ In 2023, Trump received 1,192 minutes of evening news airtime, or 79% of all GOP candidate coverage. Top challengers Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were far behind, with 166 and 35 minutes of airtime last year, respectively.
■ The networks trashed Trump with ferociously hostile coverage: 91% negative, vs. just 9% positive (scroll to read methodology). DeSantis and Haley fared better, but neither received more good press than bad. Coverage of DeSantis was 73% negative vs. 27% positive; Haley’s press was split down the middle: 50% negative and 50% positive.
■ Campaign trail discussion of substantive issues such as the economy, immigration and abortion were buried under an avalanche of media attention to Trump’s legal cases. The evening newscasts devoted 992 minutes to Trump’s various legal problems in 2023, eight times more than was spent on all policy issues combined (121 minutes).
As was the case in 2016 and during his entire Presidency, virtually all of the media’s 2023 coverage of Trump consisted of negativity and criticism. Yet while his chief rivals faced much less scrutiny, there was no media goodwill for either Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis last year, either.
To measure good press and bad press, our analysts focused solely on statements from reporters, anchors and non-affiliated sources (see methodology explanation at the end of this article for more detail). In 2023, evening news viewers heard 1,478 negative statements about Trump, vs. just 143 positive statements. That computes to 91% negative spin, on par with the hostile coverage Trump has historically received from these broadcasts.
As we’ve previously documented, Noyes’ studies on this subject suffer from numerous fatal flaws:
- The study focuses only on a tiny sliver of news — the evening newscasts on the three networks — and falsely suggests it’s indicative of all media, even as it ignores the highly GOP-friendly Fox News, which the MRC considers the gold standard for how media should be covering politics (with a heavy right-wing bias).
- It pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump and Republicans. Indeed, the study explicitly rejects neutral coverage — even though that’s arguable the bulk of news coverage — dishonestly counting only “clearly positive and negative statements from non-partisan or unaffiliated sources,” according to Noyes’ methodology.
- It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
- It fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC’s work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn’t it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
At no point does Noyes dispute the accuracy of any of the coverage, nor does he offer evidence to back up his suggestion that Trump’s criminal cases have a positive spin that should be reported, or that the leading Republican candidate for president should not receive the dominant amount of coverage. Instead, he played the whataboutism card and argued that Trump’s legal troubles should be ignored because they happened “in the past”:
There’s no question the investigations and indictments of Trump are a big news story. But the media have made the choice to cover those legal issues instead of covering the crucial issues that will face the next President, when they could be giving at least equivalent coverage to both the legal challenges facing the candidate and the policy challenges facing the country.
Elections have always been about the future. But it might be hard for voters to see a clear choice about what lies ahead in the next four years when the dominant media discussion has been about legal dramas rooted in the past.
Noyes is being dishonest. While Trump’s acts may have occurred in the past, he’s facing consequences for them right now, which makes them worthy of current news coverage.
Noyes ran the same playbook in a Feb. 21 post:
In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s double-digit victory in the New Hampshire primary, there’s been a notable shift in broadcast TV’s coverage of the GOP nomination race. While Trump remains the center of attention (garnering more than five minutes of airtime for every one minute allotted Nikki Haley), and he’s still on the receiving end of mostly (89%) negative coverage, there’s been a significant increase in TV news airtime devoted to the role of policy issues in the Republican race.
This is a broadening of the networks’ hostile agenda as the media adjust their focus to the all-but-certain general election contest between Trump and President Biden. While most of Trump’s bad press is still associated with the various legal cases against him, the former President is now also being blasted with hostile coverage on immigration (86% negative) and Russia (95% negative). That’s a big change from last year, when the networks rarely discussed Trump’s stances on various policies.
This time around, Noyes acknowledged issues of substance were discussed — but, again, whined that it lacked right-wing spin:
During the last four weeks, nearly one-fourth (24%) of the networks’ GOP campaign coverage has been about substantive policy issues. That’s a big shift from 2023, when only a mere 8.6% of the networks’ campaign news discussed policy issues — and much of that was about the other candidates, not Trump.
Now, the issues getting coverage have everything to do with the GOP frontrunner. Topping the list: immigration (18 minutes, 32 seconds), as the former President weighed in on the border negotiations in Congress. Another 17 minutes, 7 seconds was spent on Trump’s views on Russia, NATO and the Ukrainian aid package. (No other issue area received more than two minutes of airtime during the four weeks we studied.)
As previously noted, the networks are exhibiting the same hostility to Trump’s policy positions as they have in their coverage of his court cases. Since January 24 the networks’ spin on Trump’s Russia/NATO/Ukraine stance has been 95% negative, while their spin on his handling of immigration and the Southern border has been almost as harsh (86% negative).
Again, this study had the same discrediting issues as previous ones. Noyes concluded with his his usual pro-Trump spin, claiming that “the next eight months of general election coverage seems clear: endless coverage bashing Trump not only for the legal cases brought against him, but also for the anti-establishment policies he would bring to a second term.” If Trump is the choice of the Republican establishment, that hardly makes him “anti-establishment.”
The study was accompanied by a video by Noyes’ boss, Tim Graham, in which he insisted Noyes’ shoddy study was “deep research. That’s why you come to us at NewsBusters.” If this is supposedly “deep research,” why did Noyes omit so much?
Graham promoted Noyes’ study in his Feb. 21 podcast: “A new study for NewsBusters found the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC have maintained their hypernegative coverage of Donald Trump since the New Hampshire primary over the last month or so. But now, it’s pounding away on Trump’s policy preferences and not just his legal troubles with Democrat prosecutors.” Graham is not going to reference his employer’s hypernegative coverage of President Biden, particularly on the economy.