On Tuesday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, is officially out. Prior to its release, bombshells were dropped about how Biden didn’t recognize longtime associates, even actor George Clooney.
So how much time did the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) devote to the recitation of Biden’s shortcomings long known by conservatives but suppressed by Tapper and his press colleagues?
MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening and morning news programs, as well as PBS’s News Hour from May 13 through the morning of May 19 and found they spent a grand total of 7 minutes and 16 seconds on the reporting from Tapper and his co-author Alex Thompson.
Most of that coverage (6 minutes, 17 seconds) was aired on NBC. ABC only spent 37 seconds on the topic. CBS offered just 22 seconds on the Tapper book disclosures. PBS’s News Hour did nothing on the Tapper/Thompson book.
The broadcast networks swept it all under the rug just as they hid Biden’s decline before he dropped out of the 2024 race.
These networks have covered up their own cover-up.
Sunday’s news that Biden had been diagnosed with prostate cancer was appropriately treated as sad, but it also allowed the likes of NBC’s Kristen Welker to brush off any further talk of Biden’s decline.
On the May 18 NBC Nightly News, Welker noted: “This was already a challenging time for former President Biden and his family. A new book is set to come out in a matter of days that argues that the President’s inner circle tried to conceal the state of his mental decline.” Welker then pivoted: “The question moving forward, will the tone shift?...Will they shift that conversation?”
On the May 14 edition of NBC’s Today show, a co-host teased a Gabe Gutierrez segment, saying the book was “all the talk of Washington.” For now, not much of that “talk” was actually aired on the broadcast network evening and morning shows.
(While the Sunday roundtable shows were outside the study parameter, it should be noted that there was discussion of Tapper and Thompson’s book on the May 19 editions of ABC’s This Week and NBC’s Meet the Press. On the May 18 edition of CBS’s Face the Nation there was no mention of the Tapper/Thompson book but there was a discussion on Axio’s release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Biden. There was also a brief mention of the Axios story on the May 17 of NBC’s Today that did not report on the Tapper-Thompson book disclosures.)
For this study MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, CBS Saturday Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Today, NBC Sunday Today) as well as PBS’s News Hour from May 13 through the morning of May 19.
