Donald Trump’s TV Coverage Is 11 Times Greater Than Democratic Presidential Candidates, Says Report
The Washington Times wrote that per a Media Research Center report, the Big Three evening newscasts — ABC, CBS, and NBC — spent 838 minutes of airtime covering Donald Trump from June 1 through August 31. Conversely, the networks spent just 187 minutes of airtime on the 21 Democratic presidential candidates. Notably, frontrunner Joe Biden received just under 74 minutes of coverage, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg received 30 and 15 minutes respectively, and Elizabeth Warren received just under 14 minutes.
For Republican contenders other than Trump, Joe Walsh received 35 seconds of coverage and Bill Weld — who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination back in the middle of April — received none.
As for Trump, 90 percent of his airtime was negative coverage. Most of the focus was on scandals and accusations of racism. For example, the Russia investigation received 82 minutes of airtime, and almost 74 minutes were dedicated to Trump’s feuds with the four Democratic congresswomen of color known as “The Squad.” In addition, 25 minutes focused on his battle with Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings.
In terms of negative Democratic coverage, Biden received 13 minutes for his statement about working with segregationist Democrats and nine minutes were devoted to Buttigieg’s handling of voter questions on race relations as mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
“The media mania over Trump is more intense than that of four summers ago, but the pattern is similar,” the report reads. “After Trump joined the race in mid-June 2015, he immediately dominated network news coverage with 232 minutes of airtime, twice that of the leading Democrat, Hillary Clinton, and six times more than his nearest Republican challenger, Jeb Bush.”
Trump often attacks mainstream media outlets as “fake news media.” Although the president often attacks the media regardless of accuracy, many cases of purported bias have pushed him to suggest that the mainstream media is out to destroy his presidency and re-election campaign.
“Our real opponent is not the Democrats, or the dwindling number of Republicans that lost their way and got left behind, our primary opponent is the Fake News Media,” he tweeted last week.
Per The Guardian, Trump supporters are attempting to raise $2 million to investigate reporters and editors at many media organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
According to the group of supporters, they are going to use any damaging information they find and provide it to media outlets that support Trump, such as Breitbart News.
But not everyone is on board with Trump’s approach. Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman for Breitbart News and congressional Republicans, highlighted Trump’s tactic of undermining facts to ensure they aren’t seen as credible by supporters and said that the planned next step — unearthing information on the personal lives of supporters — is “crossing a line.”
