Coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency on the three major TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—was overwhelmingly negative in 2018, just like it was the year before, but despite the adverse focus on his administration, public opinion on the president has actually improved.
Excluding neutral statements on the Trump administration, the tone was 90 percent negative versus 10 percent positive in 2018, a report published on Jan. 15 from the Media Research Center (MRC) found.
Despite this, Trump’s approval ratings actually improved during the year from a 40 percent rating on Jan. 1 to a 42.7 percent approval rating on Dec. 31, according to an analysis by RealClearPolitics.
Trump’s presidency was again the biggest story of 2018, as it was in 2017, with almost 87 hours or 28 percent of all evening news airtime dedicated to it. Those numbers were, in fact, lower than the 99 hours of coverage in 2017.
“To determine the spin of news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about the President or his administration from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters,” Rich Noyes, MRC’s Research Director explained in the report.
Similarly, a 2017 report by Pew Research Center found reporting on Trump has been the most negative compared to other presidents over the past 25 years. Their analysis across 24 different media organizations on the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency revealed only 5 percent of media reporting during the period was positive.
Strong Disconnect
In spite of what the president has done for economic growth, such as gains of more than 3 percent in the GDP and historically low unemployment rates—Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was the single most covered news topic in 2018, garnering 858 minutes of airtime.
Since Jan. 20, 2017, Mueller’s probe into links between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign has received a total of 2,092 minutes of coverage combined on the three evening newscasts.
Despite such a focus on this, a majority of Americans believe Trump’s critics are politicizing the Russia investigation according to a new poll by IBD/TIPP, a collaboration between Investor’s Business Daily and TechnoMetrica.
The Jan. 14 poll found 51 percent of Americans agreed that the “president’s opponents are using the ongoing special counsel investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion as a way to delegitimize the 2016 election [result].”
Of those who agreed, 52 percent were independents, while the majority were Republicans at 70 percent. The poll also found almost a third of Democrats, 31 percent, concurred. Meanwhile, about 44 percent disagreed with the statement.
Network Spin
Just five topics were the focus of over half of Trump’s coverage on the 3 evening newscasts, according to MRC.
Those 5 include the Russia investigation (858 minutes) immigration policy (643 minutes); the Kavanaugh nomination (435 minutes); dealing with North Korean nukes (410 minutes); and the Michael Cohen/hush money investigation (341 minutes).
An MRC chart highlighted how each networks’ slant on the topics was again, overwhelmingly negative. The coverage ranged from 80 percent negative press on North Korea to 99 percent negative on the Cohen/hush money story.
Meanwhile, in December, the partial government shutdown gained 67 minutes of network airtime or about 1 fifth of the total coverage of Trump.
In that month alone, almost 97 percent of the broadcasting had a negative slant on how the president handled the shutdown.
Turning to Twitter, Trump hit back at the slanted coverage but did not name any specific person or media.
“The Fake News gets crazier and more dishonest every single day. Amazing to watch as certain people covering me, and the tremendous success of this administration, have truly gone MAD! Their Fake reporting creates anger and disunity,” he wrote on Jan. 14.
“Take two weeks off and come back rested. Chill!”
From The Epoch Times
