OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The corporate news media in America is extremely biased against the Republican Party, pushes the Democratic Party’s agenda in its story selection, and is overwhelmingly negative in general.
A new study from the Media Research Center reported in the New York Post provides interesting details that demonstrate that the average American is not imagining things when it comes to noticing this obvious bias.
Republican candidates are facing substantially more scrutiny in the mainstream media than Democrats leading up to the midterm elections, with news outlets airing negative coverage of the GOPers 87% of the time, a new study found.
Democrats, meanwhile, were on the receiving end of bad press 67% of the time, according to the study conducted by the conservative Media Research Center.
The study of ABC, CBS and NBC’s nightly newscasts also found that President Biden is drawing far less criticism in 2022 than former President Donald Trump did during the 2018 midterm elections.
MRC research explains how the negative reporting on Republicans stacks up with the Trump administration and just how deep the media’s pro-Democrat bias actually runs — despite giving a fair share of negative coverage to America’s current regime.
Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press. This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the President — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.
And another favor for Team Blue: the dominant topics within these campaign stories — GOP candidate controversies, abortion rights and the danger of “election deniers” — perfectly match the topmost items in Democrats’ campaign playbook. Our study shows discussion of these issues within campaign stories far eclipsed that of the economy and inflation, issues that voters deem most important.
This year’s study looked at the same period of time as we did in 2018, from September 1 to October 26. This year, the Big Three evening newscasts aired 115 stories which mentioned or discussed the midterm elections during, with a total airtime of 213 minutes, or about 60 percent more than the 130 minutes we tallied four years ago.
The mainstream media’s bias tends to defy all public sentiment about the president and the party in control of Congress: It carries water for the Democratic Party through thick-and-thin.
Despite the fevered TV coverage four years ago, the public gave Trump slightly higher marks going into the midterms. As of October 26, the RealClearPolitics average shows only 43 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job approval, vs. 54 percent who disapprove. Exactly four years earlier, Trump’s approval rating was 44 percent vs. 52 percent disapproval. Yet despite the public’s disapproval, the networks aren’t giving Biden the ferocious negative attention they heaped on Trump four years ago.
The Republicans consistently get hammered nearly 90% of the time by the broadcast networks. The Democratic Party recently have been getting nailed 70% of the time.
Blasting Republicans: Overall this fall, Democrats (including President Biden) drew 13 positive comments vs. 26 negative ones, for a 67% negative spin. That’s not great, but not nearly as bad as Republicans, who were slammed with 94 negative comments vs. 14 positive statements, a spin score of 87 percent negative — and virtually identical to the 88 percent negative spin for the whole GOP (including Trump) in 2018.
But one candidate has particularly drawn the nets’ ire: Republican governor’s candidate Kari Lake, who has fashioned herself as “the Fake News Media’s worst nightmare.”
That’s still better than Arizona’s Kari Lake, who was on the receiving end of nine evaluative comments, all negative, giving her a 100 percent negative press score.
Interestingly, Fetterman and Biden have gotten a good share of criticism, but Republican candidates tend to fare significantly worse in a predominately negative media environment.
Critically, the Democratic Party agenda consistently prevails in terms of editors’ and producers’ story choices.
While voters consistently ranked the economy and inflation as the most important issues this fall, the broadcast networks’ campaign coverage instead emphasized the agenda favored by Democratic consultants. Thus, the economy was only the fifth-most cited issue within these midterm stories, with 15 minutes of airtime. That’s barely half of what was spent on anonymous and unverified allegations that GOP candidate Herschel Walker years ago paid for two women’s abortions, charges that Walker vehemently denied.
Republican Research showed that Biden is consistently able to dodge accountability, while being given primetime opportunities to demonize his GOP opponents and dodge questions in the aftermath.
The Democratic Party has its list of priorities, which just happens to be the exact same list as the mainstream media’s priorities. Every time. It’s almost like they’re on the same team.
