As part of Newsmax’s embrace of right-wing narratives about the media, Larry Bell found another biased media monitor to promote for offering his preferred narratives in a Nov. 8 column:
Survey analyses of news coverage by the Big 3 television networks by the Media Research Center (MRC) characterized this 2024 presidential campaign bias favoring Harris over Trump as “the most lopsided in history.”
According to MRC, “Since July, ABC, CBS and NBC have treated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to 78% positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85% negative coverage.”
MRC Contributing Editor Rich Noyes observes that whereas the bias is likely not surprising, “the negative-positive spread was bigger than in the past two elections, which also featured Trump as the GOP nominee.”
As we documented about this very study, Noyes’ results are highly skewed and not reflective of reality because he documents only “explicitly evaluative statements” and excludes neutral coverage, even though that arguably makes up a significant portion of news coverage. He also deliberately excludes Fox News from his evaluation, since that presumably would not fit into his “liberal bias” narrative.
Bell then served up his own purported example:
The Washington Post is no more objective, running a one-sided fact check that gave four “Pinocchios” to a Trump ad accurately saying that V.P Harris “supports EV mandates, killing Michigan jobs.”
That campaign statement was clearly true with proposed EPA rules requiring carmakers to transition to EVs at a time when Michigan is hemorrhaging auto and parts jobs largely for that reason.
In fact, the Post fact-check pointed out that motor vehicle manufacturing employment in the U.S. hit a 34-year high in July and that auto manufacturing jobs in Michigan are at the highest level since 2007. The fact-check also quoted Harris as saying that “I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive,” adding that there are no EV mandates.
Bell returned to parroting the MRC:
Commenting on Fox News Digital, MRC founder Brent Bozell advised viewers not to trust Google searches for objective information either.
MRC Free Speech America researchers compared Sept. 6 search results of two separate Google searches: “Donald Trump presidential race 2024” and “Kamala Harris presidential race 2024,” to determine where each would position each candidate’s presidential website.
The results were different, starkly favoring Harris.
Recapping the findings, MRC Free Speech America associate editor Gabriela Pariseau wrote: “In the past, Google buried the campaign websites of Republican candidates. Now the search giant very clearly pads its search results about political candidates with leftist legacy news articles, many of which are hostile to Republicans and either neutral or favorable toward Democrats.”
We’ve repeatedly documented that those search terms are not ones that normal humans use. Bell, notably did not complain about the bias in right-wing media, which would seem to be the thing to do if you’re opposed to all media bias.
Bell concluded by touting a poll showing “trust in the media has hit a record low (31%), principally owing to a decline in confidence by independents and Republicans,” adding, “Donald Trump has repeatedly attributed this broad distrust to a ‘fake media.'” Bell failed to mention that the right-wing outlet that publishes his column has generated its share of fake news, including falsely accusing election-tech firms like Dominion and Smartmatic of engaging in election fraud that have resulted in lawsuits and hefty settlements.