MRC president Brent Bozell was interviewed by Stuart Varney on the Fox Business program Varney & Co. on Monday morning on the subject of the media's Donald Trump obsession. Varney asked Brent if the networks are giving Trump positive coverage to try and help the Democrats. Bozell's answer: not exactly. Trump dominates the airwaves, but the angles are largely negative:
BOZELL: There is no question but that he is dominating the news cycle. We’re looking at the – we’re crunching the numbers on cable right now and it’s gonna be the same thing. But on the networks what we've seen overwhelmingly in July in August, we saw that he got 71 percent of all airtime devoted to Republican candidates [in July] and again 71 percent in August, of all air time.
However, that’s quantity. Quantity, he rules. Quality, the quantitative analysis is that it’s been overwhelmingly negative towards him. All the controversies, all the gaffes, whether it’s Fiorina or any of the other stuff he said, the personal attacks. That’s the flavor of the coverage he’s received. So, one can conclude that Trump is great news for television because it brings ratings in. Everybody knows that to be the case. But it's also I think from the standpoint of the press. They are focusing on his negatives.
The way you juxtapose that is look at the coverage of Bernie Sanders, the other outsider on the Democratic side. They just can't give him more positive coverage. They like Sanders. They don't like trump. They love it because he’s good for the ratings and they think he’a gonna bring the Republicans down.
The media elites are very worried about Hillary, Varney suggested. Bozell said Mrs. Clinton has two problems: that her e-mail answers "don't pass the smell test," and so the scandal lingers. Then there's the coverage of her Democratic rivals:
BOZELL: The other half of the problem is the media's coverage of her opponents. The media have been giving just this slobbering, very very positive coverage to both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden now. So just as she is getting negative, they give her opponents very positive press and you see their reactions. Her numbers are dropping very, very dramatically and she just doesn't seem to be able to get any traction in the press.
Finally, Varney asked about the strange Friday front page of The New York Times, which carried no mention of the 14th anniversary of the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City. Brent said all New Yorkers -- and all Americans -- ought to be outraged by the Times relegating this event to page A-15.
