If Donald Trump or George W. Bush had a continuing hostage crisis that had lasted well over 100 days, you can bet the leftist media would plaster their shows with criticism of those administrations, probably punctuated with on-screen graphics counting how many days the Americans have been held captive.
Something like: “Americans Held Hostage: Day 117.”
So with six American hostages still being held captive by Hamas how much time (in just the month of January) have the networks aired blaming President Joe Biden and his administration for not having brought them home? Just 28 seconds.
MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS, NBC evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows coverage of just the Hamas terrorists holding Americans captive and found the networks spent a total of 18 minutes, 6 seconds on the crisis.
Of those 18 minutes, only 28 seconds of criticism of Biden or his administration was aired. Even then the critiques weren’t very strong.
[It should be noted that MRC analysts focused on the coverage that mentioned the Americans. Any coverage that only focused on Israeli hostages wasn’t counted.]
On the January 9 edition of NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell gently prodded Secretary of State Antony Blinken for in the following 22 second exchange: “I met with some of them [families of American hostages] after they met with you. They’re angry. ‘Where is the big stick?’ they said. ‘Why can’t you save our six children?’ How do you answer that?” Blinken responded: “Well first, no one can put themselves fully in the shoes of the families of the hostages. The hard part is the enemy gets a vote, Hamas.”
The January 18 edition of NBC’s Today show aired six seconds of the father of one of the Americans putting pressure on the Biden administration: “We are pressing for action, from anybody that we see, whether it’s State Department or FBI.”
That’s it. That’s the sum total coverage of anything resembling criticism or putting the onus on the Biden administration for the hostages still not being returned. There was no criticism aired on ABC or CBS.
In terms of coverage devoted to the American hostages overall, NBC aired the most in January (13 minutes, 8 seconds), ABC spent 3 minutes, 53 seconds on the captive Americans. CBS only spent 1 minute, 5 seconds on the American hostages and their families’ pleas for help.
The ordeal is horrific, but make no mistake — if a Republican was in the White House the networks would be exploiting the hostage crisis for partisan reasons. The fact that they’ve been reluctant to criticize Biden demonstrates how much they are in the tank for his re-election.
