New Study Shows Mainstream Media’s 2024 Election Coverage Is the Worst in History

If you’ve been feeling that this year’s election coverage from the establishment media has been especially perfidious, it’s not just you.

A new study is claiming that the establishment media has been in an especially unbalanced tizzy over the forthcoming presidential election between respective party nominees, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“One week before Election Day, a new analysis from the Media Research Center finds that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history,” News Busters reported on Monday.

The outlet continued: “Since July, ABC, CBS and NBC have treated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to 78 percent positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85 percent negative coverage.”

And yes, this lopsided coverage exceeds those seen in 2016 and 2020.

As News Busters broke down the research, it noted that the media was far more balanced (or, as balanced as the generally pro-Democrat establishment can be these days) in recent elections — all involving Trump.

In 2016, for instance, Trump upended then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and the media appeared to strongly dislike both of them.

In the lead-up to that election, Trump reportedly received 91 percent negative coverage, while Clinton received 79 percent negative coverage.

Even in 2020, with the establishment media largely riding in unison in support of then-candidate (and incumbent president) Joe Biden, coverage wasn’t nearly as lopsided as what’s currently happening.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump received 92 percent negative coverage, while Biden received a muted 66 percent positive coverage.

Fast-forward to the 2024 election, and it appears the cavernous difference in coverage between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates has only worsened.

“The main reason for the imbalance: Since July, the Big Three [ABC, CBS, and NBC] have swamped their audiences with more than 230 minutes of airtime — virtually all of it negative — about an array of personal controversies surrounding the former president, yet provided extremely light coverage or altogether ignored many controversies involving Vice President Harris,” News Busters reported. “Instead, Harris’s coverage has been larded with enthusiastic quotes from pro-Harris voters, creating a positive ‘vibe’ for the Democrat even as network reporters criticize Trump themselves.”

While it’s hardly a surprise that ABC, CBS and NBC all proffer copious amounts anti-Trump coverage given their past history with the subject, what’s a little more surprising is that even the establishment media are struggling to defend one of Harris’ more glaring weaknesses: her policy-making.

“There’s one way in which the networks are being relatively even-handed — when it comes to their policies, both Harris and Trump have received mostly negative coverage,” News Busters noted. “Adding up all of the evaluative statements about policy, Trump’s coverage was 63 percent negative vs. 37 percent positive.

“That’s not terribly different from the 54 percent negative, 46 percent positive coverage for Harris on the issues — a perhaps surprising bit of balance amid coverage that has otherwise been ridiculously lopsided against the Republicans.”

It’s also worth noting that despite the wall-to-wall negative coverage, Trump has taken a slim lead in several key national polls and enjoyed positive early voting returns heading into the Nov. 5 general election.

Perhaps even more concerning for major news networks is the fact that this nakedly imbalanced coverage appears to actively be souring viewers.

Citing a Gallup poll, News Busters ended its scathing report by pointing out that “only a meager 31 percent of Americans — and just 12 percent of Republicans” had any significant level of trust in the establishment media.

And that percentage is unlikely to change until the aforementioned imbalanced coverage becomes a bit more balanced.

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