A gross 28 percent of the 513 minutes covering Trump was spent on the Russia investigation, which, oddly enough, accounted for twice as much of the coverage on Trump after the completion of Robert Mueller’s report as it did before:
“Despite the Mueller report’s lack of an anti-Trump smoking gun, the broadcast networks actually became more invested in the Russia story, as their total coverage jumped from 196 minutes from January 1 to March 21 (19 percent of Trump’s total airtime) to a whopping 317 minutes from March 22 through May 31 (nearly 42 percent of all of the President’s coverage),” MRC states.
At the same time, network news reporters also brought up the issue of impeachment, bringing it up in an average of 22.4 evening stories per month compared to before the Mueller report concluded there was no campaign collusion with Russia when the possibility was mentioned in an average of 7.7 stories per month.
MRC-TV created a video compiling news reporters and anchors repeatedly invoking impeachment on their networks.
‘Rigged’ Algorithms
In August last year, President Donald Trump called out Google for “rigged” search algorithms, in a string of early-morning Twitter posts that appeared to cite a PJ Media report that found liberal media dominates news search results.Trump accused the company of predominantly showing news results from the “fake news” media and questioned if the practice was lawful.
He said on Twitter: “Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of… results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation—will be addressed!”
The Russia Collusion Hoax
The mainstay of news was the Russia “collusion” narrative that focused on the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.Mueller was probing reports of Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations of “collusion” by the Trump campaign in those efforts. While Mueller indicted some two dozen Russians for election meddling, any Trump campaign involvement remains unsubstantiated more than two years after the FBI probe first started.
Last year, CNN producer John Bonifield was caught on camera calling the Russia story “mostly bull[expletive],” while CNN political commentator Van Jones was caught on candid camera calling it “a big nothing burger.”
That didn’t stop the networks from dedicating almost 33 hours of evening news to the story since Trump’s inauguration, including 342 minutes this summer, of which 97 percent was negative toward Trump.
