With five days left before Election Day, a new study from media watchdog NewsBusters confirms what every conservative already knew: ABC, NBC, and CBS are running a coordinated negativity campaign against Republican candidates. Shocking, right?
The Media Research Center’s NewsBusters analyzed nightly newscasts from September 28 through October 26 and found the three networks combined for 56 minutes and 44 seconds of negative coverage aimed at Republican campaigns. Democrats? They got less than 19 minutes of bad press. Geoffrey Dickens, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, put it plainly: “Audiences getting their campaign news from the broadcast evening news programs, and all the online news feeds which feature their content, were three times as likely to see negative news about Republicans than Democrats.”
Dickens also noted the coverage seems like it’s “meant to dissuade conservatives from going to the polls this month,” adding that the networks have “dutifully avoided (for the most part) talking about scandals and gaffes of Democratic candidates.” Three times the negativity, zero accountability. That’s not journalism, that’s a SuperPAC with a camera crew. You can read more about network news election coverage bias and the full breakdown of which network led the pile-on.
ABC’s World News Tonight won the gold medal in the Republican-bashing Olympics, clocking nearly 24 minutes of negative GOP coverage. NBC Nightly News came in second at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, with CBS Evening News right behind at 16 minutes and 20 seconds. NBC, by the way, is currently running promos promising “Facts. Clarity. Calm.” Somebody should tell them the promo is not the product.
The Michigan Senate race between Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is a perfect case study in how this works. When Fox News anchor Bret Baier pressed El-Sayed on his previous support for a terrorist-tied group, El-Sayed snapped back, “Don’t be Rogers’ campaign. Be a journalist.” The Federalist has reported that El-Sayed signed a letter in 2012 urging Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, to “purge” media and police unfriendly to the regime. Morsi’s government later conducted a brutal crackdown on journalists and dissidents. El-Sayed has also tried to explain away his sister’s 2012 tweet boasting of their mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood.”
ABC News responded to all of this by dismissing the concerns as “unsubstantiated Republican allegations” and “attacks on El-Sayed’s faith and his Egyptian heritage.” NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker let El-Sayed’s Muslim Brotherhood denial slide without pushback, then reportedly tore into Rogers. Multiple corporate media outlets quickly attacked Rogers’ Meet the Press performance while treating El-Sayed’s appearance with, in Dickens’ framing, kid gloves by comparison.
The networks have also conveniently buried stories about Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s “multiple connections to Minnesota’s fraud cases” and a “grade inflation scandal,” and California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra’s fabrications about his poor immigrant background, including reports that his father was actually born in Sacramento.
Dickens summed it up best: “By the newscasts primarily filling their campaign stories with doom and gloom for Republicans, while barely mentioning any of the bad news for Democrats, they’ve spun a narrative that promotes excitement among leftist voters and depression for conservative voters.” In other words, it’s not a news operation. It’s a mood management service, and conservatives aren’t the target audience. The FCC might want to take a look at that.
