MRC Study: Biden Receiving a Fraction of the Negative Coverage Clinton Did in 2016
Every four years, it seems as though the establishment media’s coverage of GOP candidates, especially those running for president, becomes more biased and hostile.
There is hard data to back that up, thanks to a study of network news bias by the Media Research Center, which found that this year is an anomaly with regard to how imbalanced the coverage is of the two major candidates.
As most conservatives know, 2016 was a mudslinging contest which saw President Donald Trump come out ahead with a stunning victory, despite the mainstream media’s best efforts to hamstring him during network newscasts.
The establishment media hit Trump with an aggressive barrage of negative coverage, which actually began in 2015 and never ended.
But in 2016, reports on the candidates were much more balanced than they are during the current election cycle, and that’s really saying something.
The media covered for Hillary Clinton at every turn, and she still lost to Trump.
Per the study from the MRC, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has only received one-sixth as much negative coverage during the nightly newscasts on ABC News, CBS News and NBC News as did Clinton in 2016.
(The MRC said it came to that conclusion by reviewing “every mention of President Trump and former Vice President Biden” on ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “CBS Evening News” and “NBC Nightly News” between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, then comparing its findings to the same period in 2016.)
It appears the establishment media has spent four years stewing over the fact that its biased coverage wasn’t enough to lead Clinton to victory, and the tactics have shifted toward almost completely insulating Biden, who is dogged by questions about his mental acuity, and whose campaign might be the least transparent in modern history.
“Instead of criticizing Biden for his ‘hiding in the basement’ approach to the campaign, the networks are rewarding it by focusing nearly all of their negative scrutiny on Trump,” the MRC reported.
The media watchdog noted there was less airtime for Trump in 2020 than four years ago — 379 minutes compared to 408 minutes during the same time frame in 2016.
Still, with other events playing out in the country, the establishment media made the most of its time covering Trump.
“Evaluative statements about Trump skewed 90% negative in 2016 (30 positive statements vs. 256 negative statements). This year, it’s slightly worse: 93% negative (29 positive statements vs. 389 negative ones),” the watchdog reported.
The report also evaluated newscasts of Clinton and Biden in their respective matchups against Trump during the time frame of Aug. 1 to Sept. 15:
“In 2016, the networks spent less time on candidate Clinton (262 minutes, or about two-thirds of Trump’s total airtime), and there were many fewer negative statements about that year’s Democratic nominee compared to Trump. But Clinton still faced a decent amount of scrutiny: 90 negative statements vs. 17 positive statements, for an overall spin of 84% negative).
“This year, Biden has received less airtime than Clinton garnered four years ago, and far less attention than his GOP opponent: just 148 minutes during the period we studied, which included the virtual Democratic National Convention. (Four years ago, both parties held their conventions in July, before the study period.)”
STUDY: Media boosts Biden, were much harder on Hillary https://t.co/xktdLD9aoL pic.twitter.com/0SUPSvg5Bn
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) September 29, 2020
The MRC counted 15 negative statements about Biden from the big three legacy outlets during their evening newscasts, compared to 19 positive statements.
To reiterate, that’s 389 negative mentions of Trump from Aug. 1 to Sept. 15 of this year, versus just 15 for Biden, according to the watchdog.
Trump thus received 25 times as much negative attention than Biden during the three networks’ evening newscasts.
The former vice president, meanwhile, received six times fewer negative mentions than Clinton did in 2016.
These figures may be mind-boggling, but they show you how desperate the establishment media’s biased reporters have grown.
The partisan yellow journalists let Democrats down four years ago, despite the fact that they were abhorrent and dishonest reporters with no journalistic integrity.
This time around, they’re still terrible journalists, but they’re going with a new approach, and they intend to rectify the situation if they can help it.
The pantsuit and jacket-and-tie grifters are all in for the invisible Biden, and their strategy for leading him to victory seems to be to ignore him almost entirely.
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