Vice President Kamala Harris received the most slanted television coverage in history, a study by NewsBusters found Monday.
The biased coverage provides a reason why Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” plummeted to a record low in 2024, Gallup polling found in October.
WATCH — Massive Line of Supporters Wait Outside of Madison Square Garden Hours Before Trump’s Speech:
Seventy-eight percent of television coverage of Harris was positive since July, while television coverage of former President Donald Trump was 85 percent negative, NewsBusters reported:
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.
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.
More is here on the NewsBusters study.
It appears Americans see through biased coverage.
WATCH — NBC’s Kornacki: Polls Showing “Meaningful Movement” Toward Trump:
Citing the rise of alternative media in the era of new technology, streaming services, podcasts, and the liberated platform of X, the establishment media’s control over framing the election narrative is “shattered,” Axios’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported Monday:
- Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.
- Vice President Kamala Harris reached more young women on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, a show about sex and relationships, than she could on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC’s “The View” combined. Both shows skew very old, too.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.