It’s not just TV news that’s heavily skewed their election news this year – a major Internet news site has bombarded its readers with anti-Trump and pro-Biden headlines every morning for the past four months.
A Media Research Center analysis of The Daily Yahoo email newsletter, compiled by Yahoo News and delivered to the inboxes of approximately 225 million active monthly users of Yahoo Mail every day, found that from July 1 through October 31, those users were inundated with a startling 134 headlines negative toward President Trump. In sharp contrast, only six headlines were positive toward the President – a greater than 20-to-1 disparity. Meanwhile, Joe Biden received nearly twice as many positive headlines (29) vs. negative ones (16).
The Daily Yahoo is an aggregator newsletter that draws headlines from various media outlets, including Yahoo News, ABC News, Business Insider, The Independent, and Huff Post, among many others. Here’s just a sample of the kind of Trump-trashing headlines that were included in the newsletter in the months leading up to the election:
■ Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore – Associated Press, July 4
■ 11 ways Trump is out of touch with voters – Yahoo Finance, July 29
■ MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski Calls Out Diehard Trump Supporters: ‘How Stupid Can You Be?’ – The Wrap, August 15
■ Democrats have a plan to disrupt Trump’s convention and cripple his message: report – Salon, August 23
■ Report: Trump disparaged US war dead as ‘losers,’ ‘suckers’ – Associated Press, September 4
■ Trump coronavirus: Morning Joe host says president could be guilty of ‘manslaughter’ if he infects Secret Service and White House staff – The Independent, October 7
■ US spies say the Hunter Biden email controversy shows how 'exploitable' and 'grotesquely vulnerable' Trump and Giuliani are to Russian intelligence – Business Insider, October 18
■ More than 700 leading economists, including 7 Nobel winners, urge US voters to reject Trump, a 'selfish and reckless' president – Business Insider, October 24
In comparison, here are some of the positive headlines Biden was treated to over the same time period:
■ How Beau Biden’s Memory Played a Key Role in Kamala Pick – The Daily Beast, August 16
■ Scientific American backs Biden in its 1st presidential endorsement – Yahoo News, September 16
■ Cindy McCain, wife of the late GOP Sen. John McCain, endorses Joe Biden, following a report of Trump privately disparaging military members – Business Insider, September 23
■ If voters’ top concern is health care, Biden will win – Yahoo Finance, September 25
■ Biden leads by 10 points as majority of Americans say Trump could have avoided coronavirus: Reuters/Ipsos poll – Reuters, October 5
■ A blue wave on Election Day may unleash $2.5 trillion in stimulus, Goldman Sachs says – Yahoo Finance, October 20
Out of 732 headlines featured in the newsletter over the four-month time period (six per day), 331 of them were related to politics or the 2020 presidential race. Out of that total, 99 were deemed neutral, meaning the headlines were either nonpartisan or were critical of both Trump and Biden. That left 232 headlines that were clearly favorable or unfavorable to one side of the political spectrum or the other.
Within that total, there were headlines that were positive or negative to one political party or the other, rather than to the Trump or Biden campaigns specifically. From July 1 through October 31, there were 31 anti-Republican headlines vs. zero positive headlines for the GOP. On the other hand, Democrats were given 15 positive headlines and only one negative.
If only a fraction of Yahoo Mail’s users in the U.S. read those headlines on a regular basis, that’s millions of voters who could have been influenced by an online news source with a clear partisan agenda against Trump and for Biden.
