Over the last 48 hours, ABC and CNN have repeatedly hyped a supposed six-figure bounty placed on President Trump’s head. While even the vehemently anti-Trump MSNBC avoided sharing specifics about the bounty so as not “to encourage any sort of potential violence,” ABC and CNN apparently held no such reservations, eagerly mentioning it a combined 21 times in just two days.
Background
The bounty was mentioned in a letter allegedly written by attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh. According to federal prosecutors, Routh dropped off a box of belongings at an acquaintance’s house several months before his attempt on Trump’s life, and it was only after Routh was arrested that the acquaintance found the letter inside.
It appears Routh intended for this missive to be some sort of failsafe in the event that he was unsuccessful, as evidenced by the following line:
This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.
The Numbers
MRC analysts examined a combination of Nexis transcripts and SnapStream recordings of all regular daytime coverage on liberal broadcast (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and cable (CNN and MSNBC) networks on Monday and Tuesday. Between 6:00 a.m. EDT on September 23 and 11:59 p.m. EDT the following evening, September 24, the bounty was explicitly discussed a total of 24 times. A whopping 87 percent (21 times) of those mentions came from just ABC and CNN.
CNN discussed the $150,000 bounty 14 times, while ABC mentioned it a combined 7 times across its regular weekday shows and live streaming service, ABC News Live. Notably, ABC also was the only of the three broadcast networks to offer details about the bounty on its flagship evening newscast.
By contrast, the bounty received only one mention from CBS and two from NBC. Both networks kept the details out of their weekday morning and evening shows, instead only discussing the supposed six-figure reward on their streaming services (CBS News 24/7 and NBC News NOW).
As NewsBusters has demonstrated on numerous occasions, ABC News is far and away the most anti-Trump of the broadcast networks. Likewise, CNN’s hatred of Trump is no secret. Given the extreme slant of these two networks’ coverage, one should reasonably expect the bulk of their viewership to have a rather low opinion of Trump.
Why, then, are ABC and CNN so intent on alerting their viewers that some unhinged individual is offering $150,000 for Trump’s head? Their consistent recitation of this part of the story is, at best, wildly reckless. At worst, it could be seen as deliberate incitement.
Playing With Fire
Surprisingly, MSNBC demonstrated how an outlet might responsibly cover Routh’s letter without unnecessarily planting ideas in some crazy viewer’s head. During the September 23 Andrea Mitchell Reports, NBC News law enforcement correspondent Tom Winter gave a detailed report about the ominous missive, but refused to provide any specifics about the bounty: “There’s a call to action and some other things in the letter, which we’re not going to share, because there’s no reason to encourage any sort of potential violence.”
To be clear, nobody is criticizing any of these outlets merely for covering Routh’s letter. If anything, one might expect left-leaning news organizations to avoid reminding Americans about the latest Trump assassination attempt. And indeed, if any of the major TV news networks had skipped the letter entirely, we would be criticizing their silence.
Rather, it’s the numerous, detailed mentions of the bounty specifically that make ABC and CNN’s reporting so irresponsible. If you were, for example, a reporter for a news outlet that routinely whipped its audience into a Trump-hating frenzy, you’d probably want to tread very carefully when covering an alleged six-figure reward for his head. And given Routh’s apparent affinity for the kind of messaging that ABC and CNN offer, it would behoove these networks to distance themselves from him as much as possible.
But for whatever reason, that’s not what they’re doing.
