Tomorrow night, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will moderate the 2024 vice presidential debate between Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator JD Vance. Much as we found prior to the presidential debate on ABC three weeks ago, our analysis of CBS’s campaign coverage suggests the event will likely be a friendly venue for the Democratic nominee, and far more hostile to the Republican.
During the two months from July 21 (when President Biden left the race) through September 27, our analysts reviewed all 346 minutes of campaign coverage (161 stories) on the CBS Evening News and its Saturday/Sunday twin, the CBS Weekend News. We found that coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris has been extremely positive (84%), while coverage of former President Donald Trump has been lopsidedly negative (79%). (See Methodology explanation at the end of this post.)
While there was far less discussion of the vice presidential candidates, we found the same wild imbalance: 89% positive coverage for the Democrat Walz, vs. 89% negative coverage for the Republican Vance. Add it all up, and coverage of the Democratic ticket on the CBS Evening News was 85% positive, vs. 81% negative for the Republicans.
CBS’s campaign coverage is nearly as skewed as we found on the NBC Nightly News during the same period (65% positive for the Democrats, vs 89% negative for the Republicans). Those numbers are more tilted than anything seen in prior election years, yet still aren’t as extreme as the ridiculously skewed coverage thus far on ABC’s World News Tonight: 97% positive for the Democrats, vs. 96% negative for the Republicans.
The bias was evident in CBS’s coverage of both policy issues and candidate controversies. On the issues, for example, viewers heard no criticisms from either reporters or non-Republican sources of Harris’s poor record on immigration. Similarly, there have been no statements from reporters or non-Republicans criticizing either Harris or Walz for being too liberal. Details:
■ The Issues: CBS Tilts to the Democrats: Debates are supposed to be about the various policies proposed by each side, so expect CBS’s hosts to zero in on the three issues featured more than any other in their campaign coverage: abortion (5 minutes, 51 seconds), immigration (10 minutes, 33 seconds) and the economy (23 minutes, 6 seconds).
The Trump-Vance ticket received its best coverage on the economy: 65% positive, vs. 35% negative. Often, the praise came from voters, such as the man interviewed on the September 8 Weekend News who explained his support for Trump: “We need to turn this country back to what we had under his presidency. We’ve never had it so good in my lifetime.”
Yet CBS’s coverage of Harris-Walz’s economic policies was incrementally more positive: 66% positive, 34% negative. On the September 4 Evening News, for example, correspondent Ed O’Keefe found a small business owner who extolled the benefits of Harris’s program: “Saving paperwork is fantastic, but even the [new tax] deduction... that would help us to reinvest in our business.”
Earlier, on August 16, correspondent Nancy Cordes praised Harris’s plan to expand to boost the child tax credit: “The last time Congress hiked the child tax credit during the pandemic, the childhood poverty rate dropped in half.”
On immigration, there were no explicit evaluations of Harris from reporters or nonpartisan sources, but plenty of criticism of Trump’s views as radical (73% negative). On the August 9 Evening News, for instance, Cordes promoted the views of a local Arizona Republican who faulted Trump’s plan to reverse the damage of the Biden years: “If we did resort to mass deportation, that would crash our economy like we have never seen before.”
And on abortion, there were extremely few evaluative comments made about either side’s position. CBS’s Ed O’Keefe on September 11 reported that in her endorsement of the Democrat, singer Taylor Swift positively “cited Harris’s choice of running mate Tim Walz and his standing up for a woman’s right to her own body.”
But two days later (September 13) anchor Norah O’Donnell uniquely covered how Pope Francis had condemned Harris’s pro-abortion views as just as bad as Trump’s anti-immigration stance: “They are both against life, the one who throws away the migrants, as well as the one who kills children.” Neither ABC’s World News Tonight nor the NBC Nightly News bothered to mention the Pope’s condemnation of Harris’s position.
■ Candidate Controversies: Only Bashing Trump and Vance: CBS’s skewed coverage of policy was tame compared to the massive imbalance in their coverage (as well as ABC’s and NBC’s) of various controversies involving the Republican candidates, vs. virtually non-existent coverage of the Democratic ticket’s controversies.
Topping the list: Continued hostile coverage of Trump for his post-election efforts in 2020 (7 minutes, 7 seconds, just since July 21), followed by nearly as much airtime to the ticket’s comments about the effect of Haitian immigrants on Springfield, Ohio (7 minutes, 2 seconds). There were no positive comments for Trump or Vance on either of these controversies, just 100% negative coverage.
Regarding Springfield, “former President Donald Trump poured fuel on local grievances with a baseless conspiracy theory,” correspondent Lilia Luciano scolded on the September 11 Evening News. “The claims are false, but the pain in the community has been real for a while.”
“Top Ohio Republicans this week have repeatedly called the false claims pushed by Trump and JD Vance untrue, but that hasn’t stopped them from blaming Democrats,” reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns echoed eight days later (September 19).
There were no Democratic controversies that received more than scant attention on CBS. The most coverage — a piddling 80 seconds — went to the GOP argument that Harris and Walz were too liberal, and that was presented as strictly a partisan attack. There were no statements from reporters or non-partisan sources criticizing either Harris or Walz for being too liberal.
Instead, Harris was treated to enthusiastic soundbites from everyday voters. “Kamala becoming the nominee has brought energy and hope back to politics,” one voter cheered on the August 24 Weekend News.
“I’m excited. I’m ready to go out and vote,” another individual told CBS’s Weijia Jiang on the September 8 Weekend News.
CBS found joy for Tim Walz, too. “I think he is a great gentleman and good leader. He really engages in every community,” a Minnesota voter touted on the September 1 Weekend News.
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Three weeks ago, we reported ABC’s World News Tonight had heavily slanted its coverage in favor of the Democrats, foreshadowing how anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis would go after former President Trump at the September 10 debate.
By any historical measure, campaign coverage on the CBS Evening News is wildly imbalanced this year (just not as ridiculous as on ABC). We’ll soon find out if it means another lopsided debate, with a pair of liberal anchors joining the Democratic candidate in a three-on-one debate with the sole Republican on stage.
METHODOLOGY: To determine the spin of news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about each candidate from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters. Evaluations from partisan sources, as well as neutral statements, were not included.
As we did in 2016 and 2020, we separated personal evaluations of each candidate from statements about their prospects in the campaign horse race (i.e., standings in the polls, chances to win, etc.). While such comments can have an effect on voters (creating a bandwagon effect for those seen as winning, or demoralizing the supports of those portrayed as losing), they are not “good press” or “bad press” as understood by media scholars as far back as Michael Robinson’s groundbreaking research on the 1980 presidential campaign.
