Just 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, the broadcast evening news landscape is even more lopsided than it was eight years ago, when Trump was besieged with relentlessly hostile coverage. So far this year, the new Trump administration has faced a withering 92% negative coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC, whose flagship news programs averaged more than 19.3 million viewers during the first quarter of 2025, making them the most widely-watched news programs in the country.
For this report, Media Research Center analysts looked at all 899 stories on the Big Three evening newscasts that discussed President Trump or the Trump administration from January 20 through April 9, including weekends. Key findings:
■ The networks’ highly negative coverage of President Trump stands in stark contrast to the mostly (59%) positive coverage they provided Joe Biden four years ago.
■ While TV coverage of Trump’s last term was heavily focused on an array of personal controversies, this year’s coverage has mostly been about serious policy issues, led by tariffs (361 minutes), DOGE (310 minutes) and immigration (233 minutes).
■ The networks’ spin on Trump’s tariffs faced 93% negative coverage, while the DOGE cutbacks to government were greeted by 97% negative spin.
■ Even on immigration, the issue where the public gives the President his highest ratings, the networks’ spin was 93% negative. Out of nearly four hours (233 minutes) of evening news airtime devoted to immigration, these newscasts spent just 3.5 minutes letting viewers know just how much Trump has reduced border crossings.
■ Besides Trump himself, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced 89% negative press, DOGE’s Elon Musk was hit with 96% negative coverage, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth received a unanimous 100% bad press from the networks.
Details:
■ A Tale of Two Presidents: MRC analysts tallied 1,841 explicitly evaluative statements about President Trump and his Trump administration, of which 1,698 (92.2%) were negative vs. a mere 143 (7.8%) which were positive. (Our methodology excludes partisan sources, focusing on statements from reporters, anchors and nonpartisan sources. More below.)
Eight years ago, using the identical methodology, we found Trump was blasted with 89% negative coverage at the hands of these networks during the first weeks of his first term.
Yet four years ago when Democrat Joe Biden assumed the office, the networks’ spin was radically different: 59% positive coverage for the new liberal President, vs. just 41% bad press — a brazen partisan gap in how the elite media treat Presidents of two different parties.
Yet despite the overwhelming negativity of their coverage, the networks found Trump irresistible as a news subject, at least compared with Biden. From January 20 through April 9, 2017, the networks saturated their newscasts with 1,900 minutes of Trump news; during the same time period this year, we tallied a massive 1,716 minutes of coverage. But in 2021, evening news viewers saw only 726 minutes of Biden coverage during these same weeks, less than half of the airtime devoted to either of the new Trump administrations.
■ This Time, It’s About the Policies: Unlike four years ago, when the networks spent much of their airtime delving into myriad controversies involving President Trump — such as the investigation into his campaign’s connections to Russia — this year’s coverage has focused far more on the President’s handling of major policies issues.
Overall, our analysts found seven times more TV news coverage of key policy areas such as the economy, tariffs, immigration, the Ukraine war and the downsizing of the U.S. government (1,198 minutes) vs. all of the Trump “controversies” combined (162 minutes).
Evening news viewers saw just under 30 minutes of coverage regarding the President’s talk about the U.S. taking ownership of the war-torn Gaza Strip, for example. That was roughly the same amount of airtime as was spent on the pardon of those prosecuted for January 6, 2021 (29 minutes, 42 seconds). The idea of seizing Greenland from the Danes was limited to just 21 minutes of evening news airtime.
All of these Trump controversies received nearly-universally negative reaction from the networks, but they were eclipsed by heavy coverage of the aggressive (and, arguably, far more important) policy agenda pushed by the President in his first 100 days. Here’s how the networks handled the top three most-covered policy topics of these second Trump administration: tariffs, immigration and the DOGE project to downsize government:
■ Tariffs: Trump’s tariffs — first declared on Canada, Mexico and China early in February, then on scores of other nations April 2 before being suspended for negotiations — drew the most airtime of any administration policy, 361 minutes. The networks’ coverage was almost uniformly hostile (93% negative), as journalists touted the downside risks of such a policy.
“Tonight, the United States on the brink of a trade war that threatens to hurt American consumers and upend the global economy,” ABC’s Selina Wang warned back on February 2.
“They will generate a mountain of bureaucracy, raise prices and — so puzzling to the rest of the world — they’ll hurt American consumers,” CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer opined on April 6.
A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found 42% of American adults support Trump's newly-announced tariffs (vs. 58% who opposed them), but network news coverage was far more one-sided, with just seven percent support for the tariffs.
One of the rare favorable soundbites came from a steelworker and local union leader on the March 11 NBC Nightly News. “It’s not only going to save jobs, it’s going to create jobs over time,” Mark Glyptis declared. “If they weren’t imposed, I think steelworkers would lose their jobs.”
Network correspondents pounded the idea that tariffs would lead to higher prices. “Analysts say these new tariffs could cost an average American family of four up to $7,200 extra a year,” ABC’s Matt Gutman declared on April 3, after the more wide-ranging tariffs were announced.
Yet four years ago, when the Biden administration pushed through a massive spending bill widely blamed for triggering the worst inflation since the 1970s, network coverage carried no such warnings. Instead, our study at the time found journalists awarded 86% positive coverage to Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID spending bill, the best of any of the new Democratic President’s policies.
■ The “Department of Government Efficiency”: The evening newscasts spent a whopping 310 minutes on “DOGE,” Elon Musk’s tech-savvy approach to reducing government staffing and spending, virtually all of it (97%) negative.
Viewers heard the most about the downsizing of the federal workforce, via both buyouts and layoffs (129 minutes), followed by the impending closures of the US Agency for International Development (40 minutes), the Department of Education (21 minutes), and allegations that DOGE employees were accessing confidential information of citizens held by various government agencies (14 minutes).
The airwaves were crowded with federal workers who supplied exactly the criticism that the networks presumably anticipated when they sought their views. In just 80 days, the evening newscasts conveyed 137 soundbites from government employees, 96 of whom rejected the DOGE cuts vs. just a single individual who was supportive after receiving a generous buyout. (The remaining 40 quotes were factual/neutral, not evaluative).
“We are grieving for the thousands of people around the world who are dying as a result of these callous actions,” one furloughed USAID employee complained on the February 7 Nightly News.
“We’re under attack by billionaires, but I’m not a billionaire. So, you know, for me the next steps are scary,” another fired federal worker vented on ABC’s World News Tonight on February 15.
“I thought, well, they’re going to take a scalpel to fraud, waste and abuse, not just hack off the entire limb,” a laid-off FEMA worker told NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez a month later (March 10).
Obviously, those who have suddenly lost their jobs are going to have a negative opinion of those who have fired them. The networks’ heavy use of such sources during these weeks was an easy way to convey harsh editorial criticism of the DOGE cuts, rather than seek a true debate over the size and scope of the federal government.
■ Immigration: Four years ago, the unrestrained surge of migrants across the southern border during the early weeks of the Biden administration was the most negatively-covered topic at that time — 115 minutes of coverage, 82% of which was negative using the same methodology.
Under Trump, that flow has virtually stopped, but the networks have treated his highly effective crackdown more harshly than Biden’s failures. Since January 20, ABC, CBS and NBC have poured out 233 minutes of airtime to the immigration issue — twice as much as they gave to Biden four years ago — and the spin was 93% negative towards the Trump administration.
There was little cheering for Trump’s obvious success. Out of nearly four hours of coverage devoted to the topic, these newscasts spent only a meager 3 minutes, 29 seconds — 110 seconds on NBC, 90 seconds on CBS, and just 9 seconds on ABC— letting viewers know just how much Trump had reduced border crossings compared to his predecessor.
“What was once a record influx, now a trickle,” NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez announced on the February 7 Nightly News.
“Illegal border crossings are down 94 percent across the entire border from the same period last year, from nearly 5,000 a day to less than 300,” CBS’s Lilia Luciano explained on the March 5 Evening News. Later in the same report, Luciano related how one immigration lawyer explained the sharp drop: “Just Trump being in office is deterrence enough.”
For the most part, the tone of this year’s coverage has echoed that of the networks’ approach during the first Trump administration, magnifying the criticisms of pro-immigration advocates or those here illegally themselves. “Immigration rights groups across the country say people are scared, but they’re providing resources like hotlines and community meetings to help those who may fear deportation,” ABC’s Melissa Adan typically relayed on the January 26 World News Tonight.
■ All the President’s Men: While more than four-fifths (82%) of the evaluative comments we tallied focused on President Trump and his policies, the networks also targeted several of the President’s top lieutenants. Topping the list: Elon Musk, whose high-profile role combating government waste was rewarded with nearly entirely negative coverage — 125 hostile comments, vs. just five supportive ones (or 96% negative spin).
While the overall “DOGE” effort received mostly bad press on the networks (see above), Musk personally faced equally harsh attacks. Regarding Musk’s request that federal employees explain their accomplishments, one IRS worker vented to CBS on February 24: “This is just another step in the demonization and harassment of employees who have only worked to serve the American people.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was bombarded with 56 negative comments, vs. just seven positive ones (89% negative press). That’s better than the “honeymoon” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth received from the networks: 40 negative comments without a single positive statement, for a 100% negative spin score.
Collectively, the President’s “National Security Team” faced equally awful coverage following the revelations that sensitive information about the U.S. attack on Houthi terrorists in Yemen was posted to a non-government Signal chat group. Out of the 50 nonpartisan evaluations of the “National Security Team” related to the incident, all 50 — 100% — were negative.
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Earlier this year, Gallup reported that most Americans have essentially lost trust of the media: “When Gallup began tracking Americans’ views of the news media in the early 1970s, attitudes were overwhelmingly positive, but public confidence in the Fourth Estate has collapsed over the past three decades.”
One reason for that loss of trust may be that three of the most widely-watched news programs in the nation present viewers with a preposterously lopsided view of politics that leaves no room for fair debate and discussion.
Methodology: To determine the spin of evening news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about President Trump from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters. In order to isolate the networks’ own slant, not the back-and-forth of partisan politics, evaluations from partisan sources (Republicans supporting Trump, Democrats criticizing him) as well as neutral statements, were not included. This matches the methodology we used in 2017 to calculate the tone of coverage of the Trump administration, and in 2021 to calculate the tone of Biden administration coverage.
Using these criteria, MRC analysts tallied 1,841 evaluative statements about the Trump administration, of which 1,698 (92.2%) were negative vs. a mere 143 (7.8%) which were positive.
