Fox News, Fox Business Highlight MRC Study Showing ‘Phenomenally Negative’ Network Coverage of Trump

March 3rd, 2017 1:54 PM

On Friday, a new Media Research Center study by Mike Ciandella and Rich Noyes made the rounds on multiple Fox News Channel (FNC) and Fox Business Network (FBN) programs, topped off by a Noyes appearance on FBN’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast.

“Alright, if you think we've been seeing a disproportionate number of stories on the Trump administration that appear to be slightly negative, you are right. A study just conducted about 88 percent of them have been deemed negative in the first 30 or so days of the Trump administration,” Cavuto: Coast to Coast host Neil Cavuto explained in his lead-in to Noyes.

Cavuto admitted that it’s important to cover “negative news,” but also acknowledge “the good stuff on like the increased market worth and all these CEOs planning to hire more in America and boost their U.S. operations.”

When Cavuto invited Noyes to expand upon the study, Noyes replied:    

Oh, extremely overwhelmingly. I mean, the first 30 days of a presidency is normally when a president gets their best coverage, and this was phenomenally negative. The establishment media, ABC, CBS, NBC, are covering Trump as if he's some sort of natural disaster as opposed to a new President. The coverage is tremendous. It's twice as intense as it was during the campaign. 54 percent of all the news was about Trump and his administration, and the tone was almost completely negative, 88 percent. In campaign, it was 91 percent negative, so I guess that three percent bump is his honeymoon. 

Cavuto pointed out that journalists almost unanimously identify as liberals or progressives, so it’s no surprise they had no problem pushing “critical stories of Donald Trump and getting, you know, under his skin as sort of a badge of honor.” 

Noyes added that there’s been a double standard in the media as, back in 2009, anything Obama did (personally or politically) was given fawning coverage to create a cult of personality around him as a “popular celebrity.”

“That is nonexistent in the first 30 days of the Trump administration. It's all about policy, it's about controversies or invented scandals, and it's just negative, negative, negative,” Noyes observed.

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The MRC research director concluded that the media admitted after election day that “they were out of touch with, you know, this great wave of voters and their discontent with Washington” but have learned nothing since as “they're sort of doubling down” on their disconnect from voters.

Hours earlier on FBN, Varney & Company co-host Stuart Varney provided a generous shout-out to the study in an extended news-brief. 

“If you tune into a broadcast news show – NBC, ABC, or CBS – do you get straight news right down the middle? No bias one way or the other? Do you? No you don't. What you get is a daily dose of Ant-Trump propaganda. Do not take my word for it. Look at the work of the Media Research Center. They applied a microscope to the nightly news in the president’s first month in office,” Varney hyped before providing the uncovered statistics.

Seconds later, Varney ruled that the networks have uniformly “concentrated their coverage on people critical of the Trump presidency” and “largely excluded positive stories.”

“The print media has been even worse. The venom and contempt that daily pours out of The Washington Post seems to know no bounds. Never before has an incoming president met with such a hostile and negative media. And that's the fact,” Varney stated.

Over on FNC, Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt had this exchange in the 6:00 a.m. Eastern hour:

DOOCY: That's just some of the stuff you will hear in the media. The Media Research Center did a study of Donald Trump's – what is usually a honeymoon period with the press – found out that 88 percent of the coverage during his first month was hostile. They took out – and this was with the big three networks –  they took out all the pundits and clear partisans, and just looked at the comments of the anchors and the reporters and 88 percent of their comments were hostile. 

EARHARDT: So they crowded stories with quotes from angry citizens instead of talking to the majority of, you know, the people who were happy they just put in the sound bite so it's angry citizens. They provided little air time to President Trump, and the anchors and reporters injected their own anti-Trump opinions.

Here’s the transcript of Noyes’s appearance from FBN’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast on March 3:

FBN’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast
March 3, 2017
12:20 p.m. Eastern

NEIL CAVUTO: Alright, if you think we've been seeing a disproportionate number of stories on the Trump administration that appear to be slightly negative, you are right. A study just conducted about 88 percent of them have been deemed negative in the first 30 or so days of the Trump administration. So it’s fine, and we always say you're fine to cover the negative news be, we do as well, but we'll also point out some of the good stuff going on like the increased market worth and all these CEOs planning to hire more in America and boost their U.S. operations. We feel that, you know, 24 hours on the air, you have time to get into all this stuff. But apparently not everyone is of that mindset. The Media Research Center’s Rich Noyes releasing those numbers and has a little bit more detail and context for them. It sounds to me, rich, that there's a disproportionate attention to the negative stuff, but overwhelmingly so, right? 

RICH NOYES: Oh, extremely overwhelmingly. I mean, the first 30 days of a presidency is normally when a president gets their best coverage, and this was phenomenally negative. The establishment media, ABC, CBS, NBC, are covering Trump as if he's some sort of natural disaster as opposed to a new President. The coverage is tremendous. It's twice as intense as it was during the campaign. 54 percent of all the news was about Trump and his administration, and the tone was almost completely negative, 88 percent. In campaign, it was 91 percent negative, so I guess that three percent bump is his honeymoon. 

CAVUTO: You know what I notice, Rich, in the media world and we're very fixated on how our colleagues think about us and whether they respect us and like us and all that. So, we want to do the kind of — we want to do the kind of things that we think matches that prevailing view and if you buy the fact that 97 percent of journalists identify themselves as liberals or progressives, if you will, and have no problem seeing critical stories of Donald Trump and getting, you know, under his skin as sort of a badge of honor, it is not a big mystery that we're seeing this type of coverage, right? 

NOYES: No and certainly, Donald Trump has needled the press more than a few times since he started his campaign, but also since he became President and I think they react emotionally to that as well. But, you know, the kinds of stories we were seeing with President Obama's first month in office, there was a lot of human interest stories about his family, about the wife, the kids, the pet, you know, just positive stuff that isn't really political, but sort of builds up into a popular celebrity. That is nonexistent in the first 30 days of the Trump administration. It's all about policy, it's about controversies or invented scandals, and it's just negative, negative, negative. 

CAVUTO: And, by the way, I could see, you know, eight years ago, you know, the focus we had the first African-American president, almost everything he did touched, announced, said, joked about was worthy of attention, I'll go that far. What I am saying then is the novelty of a man who had no elected office and is a businessman, that's his only background that he brings to the table and the revolutionary spirit that name with that, again whether you agree or disagree, is worthy at least some of that same coverage. I'm not even saying all, but it's just nonexistent. 

NOYES: Yeah. It's pretty close to nonexistent and the voters who support him, the voters who, you know, the media admitted after the election they were out of touch with, you know, this great wave of voters and their discontent with Washington. Well, now they're sort of doubling down on their same attitude from during the campaign.

CAVUTO: Absolutely. 

NOYES: They're still disconnected with those voters and they’re missing the story all over again. 

CAVUTO: No, you're right about that. By the way, they always call him thin-skinned, but I can say this in this med. We tend to be a little thin-skinned ourselves and a little self-absorbed. By the way, I know you can't see, but I hope my hair's okay cause I didn’t — you know — I was rushing up to the set, Rich. Alright, thank you very, very much, Rich, good seeing you again.