In their weekend coverage, CNN opted to cover Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal nearly four times more than they mentioned the recently-passed omnibus spending bill.
Between 12 AM Friday, March 23rd, and Sunday, March 25th, CNN mentioned porn star Stormy Daniels 312 times, former playboy model Karen McDougal 290 times and the spending bill 162 times. Collectively, the ladies got 602 total mentions.
The coverage started with a 12 AM Friday rerun of Anderson Cooper’s interview with McDougal, which accounted for most mentions of her throughout the weekend.
The wall-to-wall coverage of Daniels and McDougal continued throughout Friday, despite the fact that the spending bill passed the Senate early Friday morning. CNN hit nearly 150 Stormy mentions and nearly 230 McDougal mentions, compared to just under 130 mentions of the spending bill.
Coverage of all other stories suffered on Saturday as CNN went live from the March for Our Lives, but Daniels and McDougal still accounted for way more mentions than the spending bill.
Stormy Daniels won the day again on Sunday, hitting 132 mentions before her Sunday night “60 Minutes” interview. McDougal hit 40 mentions and the spending bill got just 24.
Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson accused CNN of biased coverage on Monday night, stating, “the press all but ignored [the omnibus bill], and many more stories like it.”
“If you’re a committed Trump opponent…is Stormy Daniels really the best you can do?” Carlson asked. “If you’re looking for a new reason to be mad at the president, I don’t know, what about the budget deal he signed on Friday?”
CNN’s Brian Stelter insisted that Carlson’s critique was “cheap and dishonest” and was “insulting to Carlson’s own colleagues.” However, the numbers show that if CNN didn’t totally ignore the spending bill, the network certainly let it take backseat to Trump’s alleged affairs.
The mentions were aggregated using TV clipping service Grabien. Searches for mentions of the spending bill included “spending bill,” “spending package,” “spending plan” and “omnibus.”