Study: Harris Gets 84% ‘Positive Coverage’ While Avoiding Media

Television networks have provided Vice President Kamala Harris with 84 percent “positive coverage” since she joined the presidential race, a Media Research Center study found Monday, while they produced 89 percent negative coverage of former President Donald Trump.

From 71 to 84 percent of registered Democrats and independents who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 are mostly in the dark about many of Harris’s controversial and radical positions. The exact percentage depended on which issue the pollsters asked about, the recent survey showed.

The establishment media mostly failed to report on Harris’s radical record as a U.S. senator, but spent more time speaking about Harris than Trump, the survey also found.

For 29 days, media members failed to ask Harris questions about her Soviet-style policies during an unscripted press conference, underscoring the media’s bias.

The study reported:

Since Joe Biden exited the 2024 presidential race four weeks ago, the liberal networks have delivered an unprecedented boost of positive publicity to his successor in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris. Not only has Harris received 66% more airtime than former President Donald Trump, but the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84%) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89% negative).

As always, our calculation of spin omits so-called “horse race” assessments (see methodology statement below), but a separate count shows those statements have also favored Harris by a whopping margin (94% positive, vs. just 43% positive for Trump). At the same time, the network coverage has virtually eliminated any discussion of the strident left-wing positions Harris took as Senator or during her 2020 presidential campaign. And while Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance and his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, have received nearly equal amounts of airtime, the networks have celebrated Walz (62% positive press) and punished Vance (92% negative).

…

As far back as 2015, Donald Trump has nearly always bested his competitors when it came to total airtime. During the 2020 general election, for example, the then-President received three times more coverage than challenger Joe Biden. Yet during the past four weeks, the networks have gifted the most airtime to new Democratic candidate Kamala Harris — 221 minutes of coverage on the evening newscasts, or about 66 percent more than Trump (133 minutes).

While the media and the Harris campaign appear to be working together to protect Harris, she spoke several times over the weekend.

On Sunday, she spoke about the “duality to the nature of democracy.” She also struggled to deliver clear and concise answers about her economic policy. During one brief gaggle, she used the phrase “return on investment” four times to justify more taxpayer spending on Soviet-style policies. She rambled to a Pennsylvania football team: “You will be undefeated even if you don’t win every game.”

Harris also visited a Sheetz convenience store — which was cleared prior to her arrival — where she awkwardly bought Doritos (twice, apparently).