Press favors Kamala Harris in election coverage, study says

A new study of conservative organizing Media Research Center (MRC) shows a disparity in election coverage regarding US presidential candidates.

The analysis, which began in July and was released a week before this Tuesday’s vote (5), points out that broadcasters ABC, CBS e NBC portrayed Vice President Kamala Harris in a positive light in 78% of the verified materials, while former Republican President Donald Trump, who is also running for the White House, was mentioned 85% of the time on the same stations in a negative light.

According to the study of MRCin the last four months, the three major media outlets have flooded their audiences with almost four hours of broadcast commenting negatively on a series of personal issues in Trump’s life, while at the same time avoiding giving the same coverage to Kamala Harris, who received analysis and lighter comments and had a series of controversies ignored by the American press.

Instead, the MRC analysis found that Harris’ coverage was full of enthusiastic quotes from voters, in a clear positive assessment for the Democrat. The organization went so far as to classify Harris’ coverage shortly after replacing Biden in the race as a “rock star.”

MRC analysts noted that, after the September 10 presidential debate, the three major networks diverted attention from the candidate and began spending more coverage time with a negative slant on Trump.

Regarding the numbers, since Kamala Harris took over the presidential race on July 21st until September 10th, she received almost six hours of coverage on the networks’ evening news, similar to what Republican Donald Trump received in the same period.

Since then, however, the press has focused almost twice as much attention on Trump as on Harris: almost seven hours for the former president, compared to just approximately four hours for the Democratic vice president.

Of the twelve hours of nightly news broadcast devoted to Trump since July 21, nearly a third (230 minutes, or 31%) has been devoted to portraying his personal controversies, which, by comparison, amounts to just 5% of the time of broadcast time that Harris received on similar subjects (28 minutes, out of a total of 583 minutes of coverage).

The January 6, 2021 Capitol attack was a major focus of political coverage. About 30 minutes were used to argue that Trump is a “danger to democracy” or a “fascist” willing to use the military to persecute his opponents.

The three stations also spent about 18 minutes criticizing Trump for allegedly spreading false information about the Biden administration’s response to hurricanes Helene and Milton last month; around 13 minutes were dedicated to journalists expressing “concerns” about the Republican’s age and fitness for a second term. The study found that, on each of these topics, networks targeted Trump with coverage ranging from 97% to 100% negative.

The Democratic Party candidate, however, did not suffer such attacks on American television. Over the four months leading up to the election, evening news viewers heard about 5 minutes and 22 seconds of criticism from Republicans that Kamala is “too liberal,” nearly a sixth of the air time spent on the claim that Trump is a “fascist”. None of this coverage included criticism of Harris from reporters or interviewees.

In the report, the conservative organization indicated that the networks managed to be relatively impartial in one situation: when the subject is the candidates’ political agenda. Both Harris and Trump received mostly negative coverage in this case.

Adding up all evaluative statements about politics, Trump’s coverage was 63% negative versus 37% positive, not much different from the 54% negative and 46% positive coverage for Harris on political issues.

Three points received the most coverage: immigration (100 minutes or almost two hours); economy (87 minutes or just over an hour) and abortion (44 minutes, less than an hour). On the economy, coverage of Trump was actually slightly positive (55%, versus 45% negative), versus 55% negative for Harris.

On immigration, Trump received 11 positive comments versus 26 negative ones, three times as many individual negative statements as for Harris.

Study methodology

To produce the report, MRC analysts reviewed all 660 stories about the presidential campaign that aired on the ABC, CBS or NBC evening news from July 21 (the day President Biden ended his candidacy) through the 25 October, including weekends.

Total coverage was summed up in 24 hours and 15 minutes, divided almost evenly between the three networks: 8 hours and 20 minutes on NBC; 8 hours and 13 minutes on CBS; and 7 hours and 42 minutes on ABC.

The analysts responsible for the study counted all explicitly evaluative statements about each candidate, from reporters, anchors or invited sources, such as experts or voters. Assessments from partisan sources, as well as neutral statements, were not included.

According to the organization, the difference in coverage between the two presidential candidates this year is much greater than in the 2016 elections, when Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton received mostly negative coverage (91% negative for Trump, compared to 79% negative for Clinton).

It is also higher than in 2020, when Joe Biden, the current American president, received 66% positive coverage, compared to 92% negative for Trump.