The major network news outlets failed, at a 90% rate, to inform their viewers that the majority of the prosecutors trying former President Trump are elected Democrats, a new study from the Media Research Center shows.
“A new study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage shows at least 90% of their coverage failed to inform viewers that Bragg and the other elected Democrats going after Trump are ‘Democrats,'” the Media Research Center wrote on their NewsBusters blog.
Their study, which analyzed news broadcasts from Jan. 1, 2023, through April 10, 2024, found that networks often failed to disclose the party affiliation of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, all of whom are prosecuting Trump for separate cases.
ABC’s “World News Tonight,” for example, ran 56 stories on Bragg and his case against Trump. ABC only mentioned Bragg’s Democratic affiliation in one article, and the outlet only did so while quoting a Trump spokesperson, according to the analysis.
CBS was no better, failing to mention Bragg’s party once in 48 stories, while NBC beat them both out, tagging Bragg with the Dem label 16 times in their 59 stories about him, good for a 27% clip, according to the analysis.
Bragg, whose hush money trial against Trump is set to start jury selection Monday, ran for Manhattan DA as a Democrat in 2021. (RELATED: ‘Hillary Clinton Did…The Same Thing’: Fox Legal Analyst Says Trump Hush Money Case Held To ‘Different’ Standard)
A George Soros-backed philanthropy group, Color For Change, planned to push the majority of a $1 million donation from the Dem megadonor Soros into supporting Bragg through “direct mailers, on-the-ground campaigning and voter turnout efforts on his behalf,” according to the New York Times.
“Just as the media try to present themselves as nonpartisan while they viciously trash Republicans, they present Trump’s prosecutors as nonpartisan public officials, when they are obviously partisan Democrats,” Tim Graham, the Executive Editor of NewsBusters, told the Daily Caller.
The networks showed a similar lack of transparency while covering the cases brought against Trump by James and Willis.
For New York’s Letitia James, who essentially ran both of her attorney general campaigns on an anti-Trump platform, the networks again repeatedly failed to mention her party affiliation. (RELATED: ‘Political Hit Job’: Bill Barr Rips Dem AG Over Trump Lawsuit)
ABC’s “World News Tonight” failed to disclose James’ Democratic background in all but one of the stories they ran on her, citing it in just one of their 44 stories involving James during the timeframe the Media Research Center analyzed. CBS also only mentioned it briefly, with one quick on-screen graphic labeling her as a Democrat in just one of the 35 stories they ran on her, according to the analysis.
NBC, again, led the pack with a relatively high, but still overall meager seven disclosures in their 27 stories, according to the analysis.
“It’s sad to almost applaud NBC News for occasionally pointing out the prosecutors are Democrats,” Graham told the Daily Caller. “How hard is that? I have no idea why someone in the editorial process insists on the party label, and maybe they fight over it. It should be a standard that appears in most stories to give the court battles the proper political context. But they don’t want that context.”
Perhaps the most blatantly biased prosecutor, Fulton County DA Fani Willis, received similarly abridged coverage. (RELATED: Nathan Wade Resigns From Trump Case In Response To Judge’s Fani Willis Ruling)
The media refused to call Fani Willis a Democrat 95% of the time.
Read our latest study: https://t.co/r5W8RhOLox pic.twitter.com/KOFaaE5PdD
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) April 15, 2024
ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “CBS Evening News” aired a combined 99 stories on Willis while failing to mention her party a single time, according to the analysis. “NBC Nightly News” mentioned the crucial detail eight out of 50 times, or 16% of the time. In total, the three networks mentioned her Dem background just 5% of the time.
Willis has solid political reason to be publicly anti-Trump as she faces a progressive challenger for her DA job in her upcoming primary.
Graham castigated the networks’ faux objectivity.
“They present the epic political battles of our time as between the ultraconservatives versus the nonpartisans,” he told the Daily Caller.
“In the Clinton years, anchormen like Dan Rather couldn’t mention Kenneth Starr investigating the Clintons without warning about the ‘Republican independent counsel.’ Pay no attention to the Republican persecutor,” Graham, concluded.
