According to a new study, broadcast TV coverage of President Donald Trump over the past three months has been overwhelmingly negative.
The Media Research Center counted all evaluative statements about the president on ABC, CBS, and NBC from September 1 to November 30, and discovered that 90 percent of those statements were negative.
In September, those networks had just 31 positive statements about the president versus 359 negative statements. The disparity was even more pronounced in October, with 41 positive statements compared to 435 negative ones.
November was the most positive month for the president, likely because a lot of the criticisms shifted to Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama. During November, the media shared 33 positive statements about Trump versus 320 negative ones.
MRC found in the previous three months–June, July, and August–that ABC, CBS, and NBC gave Trump the same rate of negative coverage.
Trump is a vocal critic of media coverage, which may incite some journalists to apply a tougher standard to the president. In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, CNN’s Jim Acosta asserted that the press has to be tough on Trump because he is tough on them. (RELATED: Acosta Battles With Hugh Hewitt Over Snarky Tweets)
“I think if you look at my coverage on a daily basis, if you look at the coverage at CNN on a daily basis, it is very fair, but it is also, it is very tough,” Acosta argued. “And it is because, in part, we have a president that we’re covering these days who is very tough on us.”