On Thursday, ABC’s Good Morning America completely censored a new Quinnipiac poll showing President Biden’s approval rating had plummeted to 38%. NBC’s Today show and CBS Mornings did manage to cover the bad news for the Democrat, but only offered seconds of air time each.
“Democrats hoping to pass the massive spending plan by the end of October, with President Biden in need of a boost now,” correspondent Garrett Haake noted on NBC, before explaining: “A new poll showing his approval rating dropping to 38%, the lowest level of his presidency yet.” Those remarks only came to 12 seconds.
On CBS, correspondent Ed O’Keefe managed to be even more brief, with this 10-second mention of the devastating poll for the Biden administration: “Meanwhile, all of this happening while here at the White House they’re looking at new poll numbers that show the President’s approval rating sitting at 38%, the lowest yet of his presidency.”
Normally, one would expect such news to be a major network news headline. However, neither morning show bothered to announce the shocking information at the top of the broadcast. In fact, the polling was only noted as an afterthought, tacked on to the end of reports about negotiations to extend the nation’s debt limit and Democrats trying to shove through trillions in spending.
While ABC couldn’t find even a few seconds to discuss Biden’s political collapse, GMA did devote over four minutes of air time to a report about a legislative push to fight “hair discrimination.”
The paltry amount of attention given to the Quinnipiac poll by NBC and CBS failed to break down any of the specific findings in the survey, like the fact that 50% of Americans do not think the President is “honest.” On the question of Biden’s leadership, 56% said he did not have “good leadership skills.” When it came to “his job as Commander in Chief,” 58% disapproved. On Biden’s handling of the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border, 67% disapproved.
These terrible ratings across the board for Biden should be discussed and analyzed by journalists, along with reporting on the reasons for his surge in unpopularity. Instead, the broadcast networks are barely whispering the news (if mentioning it all), perhaps hoping viewers won’t notice.
