Stephen Lendman

Trump’s complaint about unprecedented media bias is justified.

Campaigning he said “I’m not running against crooked Hillary. I’m running against the crooked media.”

As president, he criticized “dishonest media…fake news…publish(ing) one false story after another, with no sources, even though they pretend to have them.”

“They just don’t want to report the truth…They’re…part of the problem. (They’re) part of the corrupt system.”

A new Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy report, analyzing news coverage of his first 100 days, bears him out.

Analysis was based on NYT, WaPo, and WSJ broadsheet reports, plus ones from CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, the BBC, Financial Times and Germany’s ARD.

Reports about Trump were overwhelmingly negative, 98% of the time from one news sources, significantly more hostile than the last three administrations, bias more extreme than any administration since Nixon’s second term.

Here’s the scorecard:

CNN: 93% negative

NBC: 93% negative

CBS: 91% negative

NYT: 87% negative

WaPo: 83% negative

WSJ: 70% negative

Fox News : 52% negative

Germany’s ARD: 98% negative

The Financial Times: 84% negative

The BBC: 74% negative

In covering Trump, Fox News alone was balanced, a near-50-50 split between positive and negative stories. The report stated:

“President Trump dominated media coverage in the outlets and programs analyzed, with Trump being the topic of 41 percent of all news stories - three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents. He was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage.

Republican voices accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump
protests.

European reporters were more likely than American journalists to directly question Trump’ fitness for office.

Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.

Fox was the only news outlet in the study that came close to giving Trump positive coverage overall, however, there was variation in the tone of Fox’s coverage depending on the topic.”

Media scoundrels despise Trump, few exceptions supporting or at least giving him balanced coverage. He’s right challenging unfair media bias, inventing ways to bash him - for the wrong reasons, not the right ones.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.