On June 18, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing into whether then-President Joe Biden was actually in charge — given his clear mental decline. A focal point of the investigation was the concern that the autopen was being used for executive orders and pardons without Biden’s knowledge.
At the hearing, titled “Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution,” Sen. Eric Schmitt underlined the gravity of the issue: “Under President Biden, the autopen became a troubling symbol. A symbol of an absentee president and an executive branch directed by nameless, faceless, aides that no one outside of Washington DC had ever heard of and no one ever voted for.”
MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening, morning and magazine news programs, from June 18 (the day of the hearing) through the morning of June 23, and found there was NO coverage of the “autopen” hearings.
Over that same time period there was a topic that the legacy media couldn’t get enough of, as ABC, CBS, NBC evening, morning and magazine news programs spent a whopping 229 minutes, 5 seconds on the Karen Read trial. NBC devoted the most time (114 minutes, 50 seconds) to the Read trial. ABC spent 104 minutes, 8 seconds on Read. CBS aired 10 minutes, 7 seconds of trial coverage.
This study included the June 18 two-hour ABC Special Edition of 20/20: Karen Read: The Verdict and the June 19 two-hour NBC Dateline special Center of the Storm.
The broadcast networks’ refusal to air a second of a hearing into whether or not the most powerful person on the planet was still in charge of his autopen is atrocious but not shocking.
MRC has documented the legacy media’s cover-up of Biden’s decline for a while now. See NewsBusters’ coverage here.
For this study MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News), morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, CBS Saturday Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Today, NBC Sunday Today), Sunday roundtable shows (ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation) and magazine shows (ABC’s 20/20, NBC’s Dateline, CBS’s 60 Minutes) June 18 through the morning of June 23.
