MRC’s Coverage Count Of Trump vs. Biden Omitted Fox News

The Media Research Center reacted to Donald Trump’s (second) indictment on charges related to classified documents with general ranting, false Hillary Clinton whataboutism and hypocritical complaints about criticism of the judge. It has also complained that it was covered in the media at all and that right-wing narratives about President Biden were ignored. Geoffrey Dickens whined in a June 13 post:

On Thursday June 8, two massive political stories broke, but ONLY one of them got covered by the broadcast networks. 

On June 8, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Special Counsel in the classified documents case. That very same day it was reported that President Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, the same company in which his son Hunter was involved.

Guess which one was exhaustively covered and which one was completely covered up by the networks?

Over four days (June 8-June 12) the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks predictably crammed their evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows with a total of 291 minutes of coverage dedicated to the Trump indictment.

But how much did the Biden/Burisma alleged bribery scheme receive? 

Zero seconds.

The double-standard is breathtaking.

Actually, it’s not a double standard at all. Trump’s indictment is a real, substantial thing, while the internal FBI document released by a Republican senator for partisan reasons that purportedly claims that “Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma” — note his usage of “alleged” — is based on information that is unverified. It’s real, live news versus an unsupported claim.Nevertheless, the partisan Dickens asserted, “Make no mistake, the Burisma scandal story and its ties to Joe “ Big Guy” Biden has legs.”

While Dickens touted how Fox News hyped the Burisma claim, he refused to do a coverage count of how  Fox News covered those stories — probably because it would have demonstrated the right-wing anti-Biden bias Fox News has.Instead, he ranted that “Clearly the broadcast networks will continue to obsessively cover Trump’s indictment but to be fair and balanced they would also cover Biden’s scandals — something they (as exposed by NewsBusters) have been reluctant to do.” Needless to say, Dickens will never hold Fox News to the same standards he holds non-right-wing media.

Alex Christy served up his own contribution to the coverage-count narrative in a June 14 post:

Former President Donald Trump was arraigned on Tuesday on charges related to the retention of classified documents and CNN and MSNBC wanted to make sure you were aware of it.

A study of the two networks from 5 AM to midnight Eastern found that 5.21 percent of their non-commercial air time was devoted to this one issue.  The two networks combined for 28 hours, 44 minutes, and 2 seconds of which 27 hours, 21 minutes, and 25 seconds was devoted to Trump or some aspect of the case.

As bad as those numbers are, they are much worse when looked at in an hourly breakdown. Starting in the 11 AM Eastern hour, 100 percent of CNN’s non-commercial time was spent on the case while MSNBC went exclusive at 10 AM. 

The networks may defend themselves by saying the case is historic, but so is the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive, but the war in Ukraine received a measly 4 minutes and 9 seconds on Tuesday. Other news like the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia received 9 minutes and 39 seconds while White House Pride guests getting banned from the White House for going topless got nothing.

Like Dickens, Christy refused to conduct a coverage count of Fox News. Dickens served up a rehash of of his earlier post, but with updated numbers, on June 21.

Meanwhile, the MRC continued to run to  Trump’s defense in other ways as well:

• Rubio Battles CBS Hosts Over Trump Indictment, Blatant Two-Tiered Justice System
• Speaker McCarthy NUKES CNN for Hiring Liars Clapper, McCabe to Bash Trump
• NewsBusters Podcast: The Media and the Perpetual Trump Prosecution Machine
• Nicolle Wallace Compares Trump Documents Case to Fictional Putin Coup
• CNN Claims Republicans Are Apathetic to National Security
• IRONIC: MSNBC, CNN Refuse to Air Trump Speech, Because They Can’t Air Untrue Things
• The View Is SAD Trump Didn’t Show Fear During His Arraignment
• Whoopi DEMANDS Constitutional Amendment to Bar Jailed-Trump Presidency
• Morning Joe: Trump’s a Pathological, Deeply Weird, Bizarre, Criminal Hoarder

A June 13 post by Ana Schau tried to suggest that having pro-Trump jurors for any Trump trial would be a good thing:

On Tuesday morning’s CNN News Central, anchor Rahel Solomon brought University of Miami professor of criminal law Scott Sundby on the show to discuss the selection process for “potential jurors” at the trial for former President Trump’s classified documents indictment. Despite Solomon’s disclaimer that the process was “not at the jury selection phase of any potential trial” yet, they engaged in a discussion of the importance of selecting jurors for the trial based on their “worldviews” and “where [they] get their news.”

[…]

Of course, it’s true that a person’s worldview will affect how they judge a case, but this should not be a limiter for specific people to be able to participate in any particular jury. In fact, our legal system was built specifically in an attempt to ensure a wide range of different kinds of people in the judgment process, in hopes of reaching a middle ground (and thus a more just judgment) among all of these opinions.

However, Solomon and Sundby continued their discussion of the selection of jurors by their worldview, this time branching off into a discussion on how specifically a person’s political leaning could affect their eligibility to be “a good potential juror.” He brought up an example of a juror in the Jean Carroll civil law suit against Trump who many felt should have been disqualified after it was learned turning the trial [sic] he reads “a right-wing blog.”

When one commentator insisted that jurors should “base your decision on the evidence,” Schau retorted: “This would remove the possibility of a juror being able to judge a case on the whole of the truth of the matter that he knows, rather than just the information cited in the trial, which was bound to be biased when coming from both sides.” In fact, juries are routinely instructed to base their decisions solely on the evidence presented at trial.