Elections

Report: Trump Receives 3x More Coverage On CNN Than Rest Of GOP Field

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

Might as well face it, CNN is addicted to Donald Trump.

That’s the clear-cut finding from a recent report out by the Media Research Center which found that CNN’s primetime talk shows devoted 78 percent of their coverage of the GOP to Trump, who continues to lead in most polls.

Out of a total of 747 minutes of primetime coverage between Aug. 24 and Sept. 4, 580 minutes were devoted to Trump, the conservative Media Research Center found. The next closest in terms of TV time was former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who received just 88 minutes of the cable network’s coverage — or 12 percent.

Another way to say it is that Trump garnered three times the CNN air time of the other 16 GOP candidates combined.

Most of the candidates received scant attention from the shows covered in the study — Erin Burnett’s “OutFront,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” and “CNN Tonight” with Don Lemon.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum received mere seconds worth of coverage. Former New York Gov. George Pataki received no coverage at all.

And as the Media Research Center notes, much of the coverage given to the non-Trump GOP field was spent comparing them to the real estate billionaire.

Third in terms of coverage was retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who received 41 minutes — or 5.5 percent — of air time. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was given 10 minutes of coverage over the ten-day primetime period.

A bulk of Trump’s coverage was attributed to CNN’s airing of several of his campaign events and press conferences. No other candidates received that level of attention. The network even pre-empted a 10th anniversary special on Hurricane Katrina to air a Trump event.

Trump also occupied an outsized portion of CNN’s overall content. Trump’s 580 minutes of coverage made up around 25 percent of the network’s total content in the 10-day sample period.

CNN’s Trump obsession was noted in another analysis conducted by The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper found that between June 16, the day Trump announced his candidacy, and Sept. 14, the network had devoted 2,159 reports to Trump. Bush was mentioned in only 1,067 stories, according to The Journal.

But CNN is not alone with its Trump focus. The Media Research Center found that ABC, NBC and CBS devoted 75 percent of its GOP campaign coverage to Trump.

The heavy Trump focus can be chalked up to one thing: ratings.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in its report, CNN has seen its primetime ratings increase eight percent during the so-called “Summer of Trump.” Fox News and MSNBC, which has also skewed heavily towards Trump, have seen their viewership grow by nine percent and 10 percent, respectively.

“Trump is the media’s addiction,” CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter noted on Aug. 23. “When he speaks, he is given something no other candidate gets. That’s wall-to-wall coverage here on cable news. He sucks up all the oxygen.”

Follow Chuck on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel