Unsurprisingly, the Trump-despising journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS devoted almost 28 minutes of breathless coverage on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith filing a “superseding indictment” trying to resurrect his weaponized prosecution of the former president over the 2020 election.
ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS all made it Story #1 on Tuesday night. The Big Three provided 11 minutes, 22 seconds of hype at night. Add PBS (4:36), and it’s 15 minutes, 58 seconds. The three networks offered another 12 minutes in the morning.
Let’s put aside the legal ramifications, because these journalists acknowledge it will have no legal effect before the election. At this point, it’s quite obviously about creating political effects, with Biden’s Justice Department filing indictments to create negative news stories and narratives against the Republicans – up and down the ticket. It’s about loading up words like “criminal indictment” and.
On CBS Evening News, Norah O’Donnell began the newscast with January 6 footage: “Breaking news: the new criminal indictment against Donald Trump just filed by special counsel Jack Smith, as the former president is once again accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.”
In almost five minutes of coverage, CBS employed the word “indictment” nine times. The PBS News Hour story used "indictment" eleven times. They talked of "conspiracies" and "co-conspirators" and "bogus claims" of voter fraud and a resulting "violent attack on the Capitol" on January 6 (it was "the deadly January 6th attack" on NPR this morning.) No one mentions a Capitol Police officer did the only killing that day.
Criticism of Jack Smith was rare. ABC and PBS merely explained what Smith was doing like they were on his publicity team. (Pierre Thomas read five words of Trump, that it was "ridiculous" and "an act of desperation.") There was no mention whatsoever of President Biden or his Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Smith.
CBS allowed a couple of clips of Trump, but one was his Georgia phone call (shortened to just the "find votes" part). NBC was alone in letting anyone other than Trump speak, and that was running mate J.D. Vance. Laura Jarrett said "his new running mate, pouncing on that."
VANCE: I think it’s clearly an effort to try and do more election interference from Jack Smith. He should be ashamed of himself and it is one of the reasons we should win because he should not be anywhere near power.
All of the networks could have Vance or many other Republican critics of Smith. ABC, CBS, and NBC all noted that the Justice Department usually discourages indictments within 60 days of an election, but none of them seemed to think it was cheesy to think within 70 days of an election was so much better....
PBS never mentioned any need to be considerate of an election.
