The latest special report by veteran MRC researcher Rich Noyes found that since Joe Biden was forced out of the presidential race, the ABC/CBS/NBC evening newscasts have given her 84 percent positive coverage. That's unprecedented in our MRC history. Noyes noted "the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84%) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89% negative)."
In 2020, we calculated that the networks supplied Joe Biden with 66% positive coverage during the general election, while media scholars Robert Lichter and Stephen Farnsworth (using a similar methodology) found 68% positive press for Democratic nominee Barack Obama, “the highest...recorded for any nominee over the past six election cycles” by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Not only has she received more positive coverage, she's received more coverage overall than Trump, which has not been the pattern in the Trump era. He generally attracts more negative attention than the Democrats get positive attention. "During the past four weeks, the networks have gifted the most airtime to new Democratic candidate Kamala Harris — 221 minutes of coverage on the evening newscasts, or about 66 percent more than Trump (133 minutes)."
A similar tilt came in the coverage of the vice-presidential selections. J.D. Vance's coverage was more negative than Trump's -- 22 negative statements to just two positive ones, for a harshly negative 92% bad press score. These shows spent almost 11 and a half minutes on "childless cat ladies" comments. Then came Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who drew eight positive statements vs. five negative ones, for a 62% positive press score.
Network reporters only twice explained Harris’s ideology to viewers. On July 21, CBS’s Weijia Jiang noted that Harris “has a liberal voting record that could be balanced with a more moderate VP.” Three days later, NBC’s Liz Kreutz identified Harris as a “self-described progressive prosecutor.”
Kamala controversies barely bubbled up. The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts spent a grand total of 25 seconds on the idea — always presented as a Republican charge — that the Vice President hadn’t been truthful about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.The complaint that Harris was being handed the nomination without receiving a single vote? 1 minute, 59 seconds of airtime over four weeks. When the story emerged on August 3 that Kamala's husband Douglas Emhoff destroyed his first marriage by cheating with the nanny (who got pregnant), ABC offered zero seconds. NBC offered 25. CBS was the "leader" with 52 seconds.
Saddest of all, Harris’s failure to have any meaningful interactions with the press was a teeny-tiny story. A paltry 57 seconds of coverage from these three zero self-respect broadcasts combined.
Enjoy the podcast below, and recommend this to a friend who thinks Kamala Harris is generating "momentum" without all this media boosterism.
