Bias by the Minute

Back in 2008, the three broadcast evening newscasts showered then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama with good press during his trip to Europe that July, giving it a total of 92 minutes over an eight-day period (July 20 to July 27, 2008). GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s trip to Europe last week didn’t garner a single mention on ABC’s World News Tonight or the CBS Evening News.

In May, as ISIS terrorists captured the cities of Ramadi and Palmyra, and with FBI warnings of hundreds of radicalized sympathizers here in the U.S., ABC, CBS and NBC devoted a combined 84.5 evening news minutes to ISIS. Despite the dour news, viewers heard virtually no criticism of President Obama’s handling of the terror group — just 43 seconds in a pair of NBC Nightly News stories, or less…

As they did in April, the Big Three network evening news broadcasts in May spent more airtime talking about alleged police misconduct than any other single topic – nearly 109 minutes, more than the amount devoted to the Amtrak train derailment, the horrific floods in Texas or the war against ISIS. Nearly all of that network airtime was devoted to just three instances of alleged misconduct (in…

If you're more afraid of the cop on the corner than ISIS, maybe you should blame the media. In the month of April, according to a new survey by the Media Research Center, allegations of police misconduct accounted for one out of every seven minutes of broadcast evening news airtime, or 3 hours, 43 minutes.