One of the Media Research Center’s chief (and bogus) measures of “media bias” is making comparisons of “positive” and “negative” coverage of candidates. Rich Noyes pushed that narrative before the election again in an Oct. 28 post:
One week before Election Day, a new analysis from the Media Research Center finds that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history. Since July, ABC, CBS and NBC have treated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to 78 percent positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85 percent negative coverage. (See Methodology explanation at the end of this post.)
The difference in coverage between the two candidates is far greater than in 2016, when both Trump and then-challenger Hillary Clinton received mostly negative coverage (91% negative for Trump, vs. 79% negative for Clinton). It’s even greater than in 2020, when Joe Biden was treated to 66 percent positive coverage, vs. 92 percent negative for Trump.
[…]For this report, MRC analysts reviewed all 660 stories about the presidential campaign that aired on the ABC, CBS or NBC evening newscasts from July 21 (the day President Biden ended his candidacy) through October 25, including weekends. Total coverage added up to 24 hours, 15 minutes, almost evenly divided among the three networks: 8 hours, 20 minutes on NBC; 8 hours, 13 minutes on CBS; and 7 hours, 42 minutes on ABC).
As we’ve documented, 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. And as before, Noyes’ chief complaint is that negative news about Trump is being accurately reported:
The main reason for the imbalance: Since July, the Big Three have swamped their audiences with more than 230 minutes of airtime — virtually all of it negative — about an array of personal controversies surrounding the former President, yet provided extremely light coverage or altogether ignored many controversies involving Vice President Harris. Instead, Harris’s coverage has been larded with enthusiastic quotes from pro-Harris voters, creating a positive “vibe” for the Democrat even as network reporters criticize Trump themselves.
[…]Much as they did in 2016, 2020, and throughout his presidency, the networks anointed themselves as the Trump Police, scolding and correcting the former President whenever they decided he’d crossed one of their lines.
Of the 753 minutes of evening news airtime devoted to Trump since July 21, nearly one-third (230 minutes, or 31%) has been about personal controversies. This compares to barely five percent of Harris’s airtime (28 minutes, out of a total 583 minutes of coverage) spent on similar topics.
The list of top controversies reflects liberals’ main talking points against Trump. Garnering the most airtime: the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, including Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was rigged (47 minutes). Another 30 minutes was spent amplifying claims that Trump is a “danger to democracy” and/or a “fascist” who would use the military to persecute his opponents.
The Big Three spent 18 minutes criticizing Trump for disseminating supposed misinformation about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton; 15 minutes pounding Trump for saying some immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets; plus an additional 13 minutes floating concerns about Trump’s age and fitness for another term as President. On each one of these topics, the networks hammered Trump with coverage ranging from 97 to 100 percent negative.
Noyes didn’t explain why this information about Trump must be hidden from viewers, and he also failed to identify similar concerns about Trump that cried out for negative coverage. In essence, Noyes is demanding false balance — treating Harris and Trump exactly the same even though despite offering no justification for doing so.
Keeping the corporate narrative going, MRC chief Brent Bozell appeared on Tim Graham’s Oct. 30 podcast to promote Noyes’ study, with Graham adding: “There has never been network news that looked and sounded more like campaign advertising.” No mention, of course, on how Fox News has served up campaign advertising for Trump.
Noyes offered a similarly shoddy analysis in a Nov. 5 post:
It’s finally over, and the 2024 presidential campaign made history in at least one ignominious respect: Broadcast evening news coverage of the candidates was the most wildly imbalanced in history, favoring Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris over former Republican President Donald Trump by the greatest margin ever recorded.
The final Media Research Center (MRC) study released last week showed evaluative coverage of Harris — excluding “horse race” assessments — on ABC, CBS and NBC was 78% positive vs. 22% negative. For Trump, those numbers were flipped: just 15% positive press, vs. 85% negative coverage. Subtracting Trump’s positive press from Harris’s, the advantage to the Democratic nominee was 63 points, the greatest in the modern media age. [See methodology explanation at the end of this article.]
The previous worst display of imbalanced campaign coverage came just four years ago. In 2020, the MRC found former Vice President Joe Biden basked in 66% positive network coverage, vs. just 8% positive coverage for then-President Trump, a 58-point imbalance in favor of the Democrats. (That year’s coverage was also the most negative for any presidential nominee, even worse than what Trump received in 2016 and this year.)
While the MRC’s presidential campaign studies only reach back to 2016, similar studies were conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) from 1988 through 2008. Using a similar methodology, they found the networks tipped heavily in favor of Illinois Senator Barack Obama in 2008 (68% positive press), vs. just 33% positive for Arizona Senator John McCain, a Democratic advantage of 35 points.
Again, Noyes excluded neutral coverage despite it being a significant part of news reports, and he again excluded Fox News from his evaluation. And again, he’s creating the dishonest narrative that this sliver of coverage is the entirety of network news coverage. He knows this isn’t true, but he’s being paid to push a narrative, not to be honest. He also didn’t mention that the CMPA gets much of its money from conservative sources, raising further questions about the studies’ intent.
Noyes waited until the final sentence of his post to admit something: “Disclosure: I worked on CMPA’s election studies in 1992 and 1996.” These studies weren’t honest then and they aren’t now. Noyes never explains why — outside of being paid to push a false partisan narrative — he continues to cling to this discredited methodology.