93% negative: TV networks donate 124 hours to Dem campaign against Trump

David Muir of ABC News

ABC, CBS and NBC have given 124 hours of broadcast time to the Democrats' effort to impeach and remove President Trump, with 93% negative coverage of the president, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center.

In the first 100 days since House Democrats began their impeachment investigation, Sept. 24, the networks "have aggressively aided the effort," MRC said, according to a report on the organization's Newsbusters website.

"Evening news viewers heard 72 positive statements vs. 981 negative statements [regarding President Trump,]" the analysis found.

That's a 93% negative spin score.

"While most citizens would want their media to be even-handed in their coverage of candidates, the networks seem poised to be as lopsidedly negative in their coverage of Trump's 2020 campaign as they have been in their coverage of his presidency," MRC said.

There were at least 124 hours of wall-to-wall live coverage of impeachment as they pre-empted regular programming.

It demonstrated "the same relentless negativity toward President Trump that they first displayed during the 2016 president campaign," MRC said.

"From September 24 through January 1, we tallied 1,053 evaluative comments about the president, 93% of which were negative" the report said. "It's pretty clear by now that reporters aren't going to reward the president with much good press even for obvious achievements such as the strong economy or the victory over ISIS terrorists in Syria (including the killing of their elusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)."

Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the impeachment effort, the networks have generated a combined 849 minutes of evening news coverage about the subject.

That's about half the time it took the networks to reach that total in their coverage of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation.

"The evening news resources being poured into the Ukraine/impeachment coverage, which alone accounts for nearly three-fourths (74.3%) of all of their Trump coverage, left little time for other topics. During these 100 days, there's been paltry coverage of the president's handling of North Korea (19 minutes) and immigration (17 minutes), both major topics in the past."

The report said the administration's trade talks with China "were given just over six minutes of coverage during the 100 days, while the successful effort to get the USMCA trade deal through the House received a scant 66 seconds of airtime."

"Total coverage of the administration’s economic program: just nine minutes, or barely one percent of the airtime spent on impeachment."

The skewed coverage "aims to build up the significance of the event in the viewer's mind – suggesting an historic moment on par with the Kennedy assassination or 9/11, not a futile partisan exercise," the report said.

However, Nielsen ratings showed the public didn't seem interested in the hearings conducted by the House Intelligence Committee.

"And polls collected by RealClearPolitics indicated all of this coverage might have actually hurt the Democrats’ efforts. On November 12 (the day before the hearings began), a slight plurality favored impeaching and removing the President, 49% to 47% against. By December 19 (the day after the House voted to impeach), those figures had reversed — 48% opposed to removal, vs. 47% in favor."

Also, as the networks are spending a majority of their time on the president, Democratic presidential candidates have seen their airtime plummet. Joe Biden, for example, got only 107 minutes during that time.

"Other top Democrats were just as invisible," the report said. But 54% of the statements made about Democrats were positive.