Crunching the Numbers: What to Watch For at the Next GOP Debate

Rich Noyes
December 14th, 2015 8:15 AM
After a five-week hiatus, the Republican presidential candidates meet tomorrow night for their next prime time debate, moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Based on how the various networks handled the first four debates, viewers of Tuesday's CNN debate should expect: 1) the questions will be aimed at getting the candidates to fight with one another; 2) Donald Trump will take more airtime than any of…
 
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Mauled in the Morning: GOP Candidates Hit from the Left

Geoffrey Dickens
December 10th, 2015 9:30 AM
An MRC analysis of interviews from January 1 to December 4 finds the broadcast networks have pounded the candidates with a blizzard of hostile and left-wing questions.
 

Networks Spend 105 Minutes in 2 Days Bashing Trump Comments

Mike Ciandella
December 9th, 2015 3:45 PM
The networks are never willing to let a good Trump controversy go to waste. The morning and evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC have dedicated a whopping 105 minutes (1 hour and 45 minutes) to criticism of Trump’s comments about restricting Muslim immigration, since Trump made the comments on December 7.
 

Obsession: Network Evening Shows Spend 24 Mins on Trump’s Muslim Ban

Curtis Houck
December 8th, 2015 10:16 PM
Acting as though the latest news the war against ISIS, new developments in the Hillary Clinton scandal or any other story barely existed, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a whopping 24 minutes and three seconds of their Tuesday evening newscasts to obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. Not surprisingly, NBC Nightly News led the way…
 

World Series Loses to Women's World Cup in Network Nightly News

Mike Ciandella
November 3rd, 2015 12:25 PM
The Kansas City Royals may have won Major League Baseball’s World Series, but the World Series lost when it came to network news coverage of professional sports championships. MRC’s analysis of the three evening news broadcasts shows that in 2015, ABC, CBS and NBC overwhelmingly favored coverage of the NFL Super Bowl, with 59 minutes of coverage.
 
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Journalists vs. 'Far Right,' 'Hardline' and 'Ultra-Conservative' GOP

Rich Noyes
October 28th, 2015 10:05 AM

Over the past four weeks, as the broadcast networks have covered the House leadership contest, reporters have gone out of their way to relentlessly paint House Republicans, especially the Freedom Caucus, as ideologues who are outside the American political mainstream. From September 25 to October 23, MRC analysts reviewed all 82 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories about John…

 

On TV News, Non-Candidate Biden Eclipsed All Besides Clinton and Trump

Rich Noyes
October 22nd, 2015 9:59 AM
On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden ended his flirtation with a bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination, but only after an extended period in which the broadcast networks gave his non-candidacy more airtime than that of any declared Republican or Democratic candidate other than frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. From August 1, when the networks began covering the possibility of a…
 

Hillary Gets the Most Press; Bernie and Biden Get the Best Press

Rich Noyes
October 6th, 2015 9:30 AM
According to the latest statistics from the MRC’s ongoing tracking of ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening news coverage of the campaign, frontrunner Hillary Clinton has garnered 80 percent of the Democratic airtime since January 1. Her closest announced rival, the socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, has received just six percent of the airtime, or about 24 minutes vs. 337 minutes for Clinton. Unlike…
 

Fiorina Now 2nd-Most Covered GOP Candidate; Bush Falls to 6th

Rich Noyes
October 1st, 2015 2:57 PM
Since the September 16 GOP debate, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have significantly ramped up their coverage of businesswoman Carly Fiorina, giving her more than 15 percent of the GOP candidates’ airtime over the past two weeks. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush attracted just three percent of TV news coverage; in the first six months of 2015, Bush dominated the coverage with 36 percent…
 

It’s a Miracle! Pope Gets Eight Times Network Coverage of Trump

Mike Ciandella
September 25th, 2015 11:31 AM
He’s only been in the US for a few days, but the Pope has already accomplished what 16 GOP presidential candidates haven’t been able to for months: getting more network coverage than Donald Trump.  During the first three days Pope Francis was in the U.S., the news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC spent eight times the amount of coverage on the Pope than they did on presidential hopeful Donald…
 

Where Socialist Bernie Sanders Is Winning: The Sunday Show Primary

Jeffrey Meyer
September 17th, 2015 2:12 PM
On Sunday, Hillary Clinton will make her first appearance on the Sunday morning political shows as a 2016 presidential candidate when she sits down with CBS’s John Dickerson on Face the Nation. She’s getting a very late start: While Clinton has so far avoided interviews with the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) Sunday shows, 18 other presidential candidates have made a total of 106 appearances…
 

CNN Spends 78 Percent of GOP Campaign Coverage on Trump

Mike Ciandella
September 16th, 2015 9:56 AM
A Media Research Center study finds that, over a two week period, coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign took up nearly 78 percent of all CNN’s prime time GOP campaign coverage – 580 minutes out of a total of 747 minutes. All 16 non-Trump candidates got a combined total of just 167 minutes.
 

MRC Study: TV News Obsesses Over Trump, Ignores Other Candidates

Rich Noyes
August 25th, 2015 9:31 AM
Two weeks after the first GOP presidential debate of Campaign ’16, the broadcast networks continue to obsess over Donald Trump to the near-exclusion of the other sixteen Republican presidential candidates. An MRC analysis of the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news broadcasts during the two weeks prior to the August 6 debate (including weekends) found Trump accounted for 55% of all GOP candidate airtime…
 

TV News: An Avalanche of Trump Coverage, Not Much for Others

Rich Noyes
August 4th, 2015 9:05 AM

There are currently 17 declared candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, but viewers of the three broadcast evening news shows this year have mainly heard about just two of them: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and New York businessman Donald Trump. And even though Trump received virtually no TV news attention until he officially declared on June 16, he’s received far more…