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Report: 91 Percent of Evening News Coverage 'Hostile' to Donald Trump

AP
October 25, 2016

A report released Tuesday by the Media Research Center found that 91 percent of evening news coverage dedicated to Donald Trump was "hostile" to the Republican nominee.

Evening news coverage tended to focus on Trump's personal controversies rather than scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton's private email server and the Clinton Foundation, according to the study.

The Media Research Center, or MRC, focused its study on the three major broadcast channels, Politico reported.

For the study, MRC analyzed all 588 evening news stories that either discussed or mentioned the presidential campaign on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts from July 29 through October 20 (including weekends). Of the total newscasts, the networks devoted 29 percent of their time to the campaign. The study did not include comments from the campaigns or candidates themselves, instead focusing on what the correspondents, anchors, expert commentators, and voters on the street said in order to try and hone in on any sort of slant from the networks.

Though neither candidate was necessarily celebrated, Clinton largely just stayed out of the line of fire.

Trump's lewd comments about women from a 2005 video and his other alleged sexual and verbal indiscretions against women received the most coverage, totaling 102 minutes, while coverage of Clinton's health and her private email server garnered 93 minutes of coverage combined.

The MRC, founded by Brent Bozell in 1987, is a conservative organization dedicated to covering liberal bias in the media.