On Monday, President Donald Trump made it very clear that passing his very popular voter ID bill – the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act – is his “number one priority.” This comes on the heels of his Truth Social statement on Sunday that he will “not sign other Bills until this is passed.”
NewsBusters previously reported on Friday that the broadcast networks have completely ignored the SAVE America Act legislation since it passed the House on February 11. There has also been a similar lack of interest from the Big Four News Apps.
Since Friday, the President has doubled down on his pressure to get the bill passed. So did this finally prompt the networks to cover it?
No.
MRC analysts reviewed the ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning news shows from February 11 (when the SAVE America Act passed the House) to the morning of March 10 and found the broadcast networks have devoted ZERO seconds to the bill that enjoys over 70 percent approval in recent polling.
Are the networks deliberately refusing to cover the bill, hoping that this popular Trump agenda item will just die on the vine?
It should be noted that ABC, CBS and NBC are aware of the President’s push of the SAVE America Act, but they are just choosing to bury the news on their low-rated very early morning news programs or streaming services.
On the March 9 edition of ABC’s GMA First Look, which airs in the 4am hour in most major markets, correspondent Hanna Battah offered a brief 18-second mention in her story on the partial government shutdown affecting travellers. On the March 9 edition of NBC’s Early Today, also a 4am show on most stations, correspondent Alice Barr offered 26 seconds on Trump insisting “he will not sign any bill” until the SAVE Act bill was passed.
On CBS’s 24/7 streaming outlet, correspondent Major Garrett spent 30 seconds on the bill on the March 5 edition of The Takeout.
For this study, MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News), morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, NBC Today) from February 11 through the morning of March 10.
President Trump’s voter ID bill isn’t just being suppressed just on the broadcast networks. It’s a very similar situation on the Big Four News Apps.
Big Four News Apps Hide SAVE America Act Despite Bipartisan Popularity
The suppression of the SAVE America Act isn’t limited to broadcast networks. MRC Free Speech America’s review found that a similar pattern continued on the Big Four News Apps, where coverage was either completely absent or negative.
Despite the bill’s growing bipartisan support, Apple News, Google News and Microsoft’s MSN chose silence.
Yahoo News did feature the legislation, but only twice in its top 20 morning stories across three days — and both stories came from left-leaning outlets that framed the bill negatively.
This analysis focused on the top 20 stories promoted by Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN, and Yahoo News during the mornings of March 8–10.
Across these three days:
Apple News, Google News and MSN promoted a combined 180 stories in their top 20 morning placements. Not a single one mentioned the SAVE America Act in their headlines.
Yahoo News did include the SAVE America Act in its promoted coverage, but only twice out of the 60 stories featured in its top 20 morning listings during the March 8–10 review period.
Notably, both stories came from left-leaning outlets, Yahoo News and NBC News, and both framed the legislation negatively.
On March 9, Yahoo News featured an NBC News write-up about Trump vowing to block legislation until the SAVE America Act is passed. NBC News’s bias was evident from the start, warning readers in the second paragraph that “Noncitizen voting is illegal and uncommon.”
Yahoo News took its bias one step further, directly accusing the bill in its headline of “potentially disenfranchising millions of voters.” [Emphasis added.]
The first paragraph repeated the claim: “President Trump on Sunday said he would not sign any new legislation into law until Congress passes the SAVE Act, a Republican-led bill that would dramatically overhaul elections nationwide and potentially disenfranchise millions of voters.” [Emphasis added.]
When explaining what the bill does, Yahoo News even claimed that it “would create additional hurdles for women who take their partner’s name after getting married, who would need to provide extra documentation to explain why their current name doesn’t match what’s listed on their birth certificate or passport.”
The coverage also echoed NBC News by emphasizing that “Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in most U.S. elections,” while undercutting Trump’s comments about illegal voting:
“Though Trump and many Republicans have claimed that noncitizen voting is rampant in American elections, researchers have found a ‘shockingly small number’ of actual documented incidents — far too few to impact the outcome of even small local elections.”
