Media Survey: News “Unchanged in its Hostility” to Donald Trump

Has the American news media learned any lessons yet about how their biased coverage of the Trump administration is eroding their credibility with tens of millions of viewers? If a new survey from the Media Research Center is any indication, the answer would be a resounding “hell, no.” According to the watchdog’s study, 91% of nightly broadcast news coverage of Trump has been negative over the last three months. In a broad survey that included ABC, NBC, and CBS’s evening newscasts from September through November, the group determined that negative coverage of the president was still at historic levels.

“In September, there were just 31 pro-Trump statements on the Big Three vs. 359 negative,” explained NewsBusters’ Rich Noyes. “In October, the number of positive statements grew to 41, while the negative statements swelled to 435. In November, there was somewhat less coverage of the President, as political journalists raced to cover the allegations against Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, but the ratio remained essentially unchanged: 33 positive statements vs. 320 negative statements.”

Noyes, comparing the results from the identical 91% figure from the summer, said “TV news is unchanged in its hostility to the president.”

This, of course, leads President Trump to maintain his hostility to the media, which the media, in turn, complains about endlessly using dire, end-of-democracy declarations in a pathetic attempt to distract the public from its own reckless behavior. It’s a vicious cycle, but it’s one that the major networks could bring to an end overnight if they would just call a strike a strike. Is that so much to ask? Apparently it is.

It would be hard enough to swallow the endlessly-tilted slant of the news, of course, but what is completely unacceptable is the outright fake news that we’ve seen the networks and newspapers use in their quest to outdo one another with the most outlandish anti-Trump stories. Just over the past week or so, we’ve seen CNN forced to retract a story about Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks, a Washington Post reporter try to trick Twitter followers into thinking Trump’s Pensacola rally was a bust, and an ABC News reporter get a Trump/Russia story so wrong that he wound up suspended from his job. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when you look back over the past year.

The networks, broadcast and cable alike, have seen soaring ratings in exchange for their perpetual feud with the president, but at some point, we have to demand accountability. Are these cretins in the news business or are they political warriors? Americans may be entertained for the time being, but eventually, the fun will be over and these journalists are going to realize exactly what they sold in exchange for a few months of ratings.