BROADCAST BIAS: From space to ceasefires, networks still paint Trump as the problem
President Trump recently complained, "I get 93 percent bad publicity," and studies from the Media Research Center, where I work, have shown time and again that evening news coverage on the broadcast networks is around 90% negative, month after month. How can that be? It’s because these networks will find something negative no matter which direction the president, or the country, takes.
The motto might seem like "Good news is not news." Or maybe it’s not the big story.
Take the Artemis space mission to the moon. On April 1, during what may have been the most important moment in American space history since 1972, ABC’s "Good Morning America" aired seven anti-Trump reports for over 15 minutes before it finally started covering space. ABC was especially interested in arguing that Trump was out to undermine confidence in the midterm elections by pushing back on the inadequacies of mail-in voting.
Later in the day, when it was clear that the Artemis launch was a success, NBC reporter Tom Costello didn’t want any flag-waving for the USA: "I think it's important and relevant to take a moment and say wow, we should be collectively, not as Americans, not as North Americans, but just as humans, proud of the achievement here — that humans have been able to do this."
Then there was a daring rescue of an airman from Iranian territory, clearly very positive news. But during the Easter edition of "Sunday Morning" on CBS, they dedicated four minutes and four seconds to the war in Iran but spent only 43 seconds of that on the rescued airman, or about 18% of their Iran focus.
The rest was Pentagon reporter David Martin, presenting experts criticizing Trump’s threats to damage Iranian infrastructure. First, there was former Obama aide Tess Bridgeman: "Obliterating all power plants, threatening coercive actions against the civilian population to try to bring a government to the negotiating table — those kinds of things are flatly illegal." Martin also quoted former Reagan adviser Elliott Abrams suggesting the Trump message was all wrong: "We want the Iranian people on our side."
The coverage of Trump is so relentlessly negative that Iran’s Islamic theocracy, or what’s left of it, is almost receiving more positive press than the president. These networks talk about Trump’s punishment of the Iranians, but they can’t focus on the hundreds of protesters massacred by Iran’s government in the weeks before the war began.
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Trump’s Easter message on Truth Social threatening Iran riled up all the anchors and reporters. "Open the f---ing Strait [of Hormuz], you crazy bastards, or you will be living in Hell," he wrote.
The next night, CBS White House reporter Weijia Jiang promoted the opposing view: "In an open letter, more than 100 international law experts argue bombing power plants amounts to potential war crimes. Trump said he’s not concerned about that possibility." He said, "I hope I don’t have to do it." These threats are his unique method of negotiation.
The networks easily find one hundred "experts" to accuse Trump of "war crimes," but not "experts" who accuse Iran of human rights abuses.
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PBS located one of the open-letter signers, former military lawyer Rachel Van Landingham, who has written a series of vicious op-eds against Trump and Pete HegsethPete Hegseth on the MS NOW website. (PBS and MS NOW are indistinguishable.) She reliably trashed the president: "He’s threatening to make our military engage in war crimes and therefore stain their honor and their soul and come back with moral injury. Why? Because threatening to destroy every bridge and every single power plant in the entire state of Iran is called an indiscriminate attack. That is a war crime." The PBS expert dropped the term "war crime" 11 times in her interview.
When Trump announced a ceasefire on Tuesday, the TV spin shamelessly flipped. Trump went from war criminal to creating "TACO Tuesday," playing off the liberal phrase "Trump Always Chickens Out." It sounds bizarre to describe Trump ordering a series of devastating military attacks on Iran as "chickening out," but mockery is part of the broadcast-network toolbox.
The streaming service of CBS News brought on Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong, who coined the "TACO" term last year to describe Trump’s method of tariff negotiations and how it roils the markets. He explained that he thought the acronym sounded funny and played off Trump’s "obsession" with the Mexican border. All the liberals clearly agreed.
The late-night comedians pounced. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel commented: "So, all day today, everyone, most notably the people of Iran, were wondering if their civilization was going to die tonight. Well, good news, it didn't. It was the TACO Tuesday of all TACO Tuesdays. The president decided not to drop the chalupa for at least another two weeks."
Much like the ceasefire in Gaza, the networks stayed negative, marking every "chaotic" episode that demonstrated the ceasefire was only partial, that it was messy.
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The pattern never ends.
Network coverage of Trump was negative even in the first days after Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.
It doesn’t matter which direction Trump takes, it’s always wrong.
Maybe that’s why the president calls it "fake news."