Free Republic

One of the Trump Administration's major accomplishments since taking office has been the virtual destruction of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, including the capture of the terror group's capital city of Raqqa in Syria. Under Trump, U.S.-backed coalition forces have regained nearly all of the territory that the self-ordained caliphate occupied in 2015. Yet on network evening broadcasts, the President and his administration have received virtually no credit for this achievement. Since Inauguration Day (January 20, 2017), the three broadcast network evening newscasts have spent more than 10,000 minutes on the Trump presidency, and only 33 minutes (0.33%)...

Here’s one top takeaway from network news coverage in 2017: Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton. MRC analysts have been tracking all evening news coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day. From Inauguration Day, January 20, through last Friday, October 20, these broadcasts have aired an astonishing 1,000 minutes of coverage discussing Russia’s attempt to boost Trump in 2016, and speculation that Trump’s campaign may have colluded with the Russians in this project. Last week, The Hill published new information about Russian...

If you ever doubted that the media see the news through a partisan prism, consider this: in less than two days, ABC, CBS and NBC devoted nearly 7 times as much coverage to Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian Ambassador in his role as a U.S. Senator than they did when then-Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress in June 2012. On March 2, Democrats accused Sessions of misleading Congress by not disclosing that he met with the Russian ambassador to the United States twice while he was serving as Senator. Despite admitting that the statements Sessions...

The broadcast morning and evening news shows have spent 20 minutes and 18 seconds focusing on White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s comments about the size of Donald Trump’s Inauguration crowd. Meanwhile, when President Trump signed a far more consequential executive order that limits the penalties from the Affordable Care Act, the same networks spent only 1 minute and 39 seconds covering it – less than one-twelfth the coverage. On Sunday's World News Tonight, for example, ABC correspondent Mary Bruce took this jab: "Today, the White House defended their denial of reality." All three networks showed NBC Meet the Press...

The media’s fascination with the Trump-and-Billy-Bush tape keeps adding up. In the first three days of coverage – Friday evening through Monday morning – MRC analysts determined the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs have aired more than 150 minutes of coverage. Over that same time period, they’ve aired less than 10 minutes on the Wikileaks expose of Hillary’s Wall Street speeches. The feeding frenzy over Trump’s crude sex talk dwarfs the media focus on Bill Clinton’s crude sex talk – and actions. On February 11, 1994, Paula Jones appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference to...

Here’s what is most unusual about this week in news coverage of the GOP nomination drama: what’s not the top story of the week. On April 13, ABC’s World News Tonight correspondent Tom Llamas devoted most of that night’s report to chilling death threats against the Colorado state Republican party chairman, angered at how Donald Trump failed to win any delegates at the weekend party convention. Besides that one report, and two minor mentions (one on ABC’s Good Morning America and on Thursday’s CBS Evening News, that’s all the broadcast news attention given to reports of actual death threats in...