CNN public editor: Television journalism will remain broken post-Trump
According to the Stanford News Analyzer, which counts the number of times a person appears on-screen, Trump was on CNN 1,332 times in September; Biden clocked 829 appearances. That’s an improvement since April, when Biden appeared just 89 times to Trump’s 1,568—but still egregiously lopsided. (As of October 18, Trump also leads 593 to 179 for the month.)
In April, CNN aired Trump 1,568 times; Biden 89.
In September, Trump appeared 1,332 times; Biden 829.
As of October 18, Trump leads 593 to 179 for the month.
What does the public miss when networks focus so narrowly on Trump’s exploits? Last week, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, released a study of Biden’s tax plan that concluded he would cut taxes for most Americans in 2021. The study is significant, and has a potential impact on people’s actual lives. It’s certainly the kind of news that a voter might want to know before voting. How many times has it been mentioned on CNN? Not once.
IN 2016, TELEVISION NETWORKS CLAIMED IGNORANCE about how their imbalanced and overly simplistic coverage, which essentially treated Donald Trump as the star of a reality show, influenced the presidential election.
At the time, I was a producer at MSNBC. While I argued that Trump was benefitting from unfiltered, unedited airtime, some of my colleagues thought it better to let the audience see Trump’s true colors. Then they could make up their own minds—presumably against him.
At the end of his first year in office, in December 2017, Trump predicted to the New York Times that he would win reelection, “because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.” The relationship cut both ways. According to mediaQuant, a firm that tracks the value of media coverage, in the lead-up to the 2016 election Trump “received $5.6 billion throughout the entirety of his campaign, more than Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio combined.”
That toxic symbiosis continues. News producers still chase Trump’s whims, because his self-manufactured scandals consistently provide high ratings. To justify the glut of coverage—at the expense of nearly every other important news topic—they point to his innate newsworthiness as president. We must consider what is being overlooked. During his presidency, fatal encounters with police have remained steady (about a thousand a year). Regulations to protect air and water have been removed. Judges, many unqualified, all zealously ideological, have been confirmed at a record pace. All have happened in broad daylight on Capitol Hill, but with minimal scrutiny from the networks.
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https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/cnn-public-editor-television-journalism-will-remain-broken-post-trump.php
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