Nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC have been bashing Donald Trump for the past three months with "hostile" coverage, a study from the conservative Media Research Center finds.
According to the study, Trump has gotten far more broadcast network news coverage than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — and 91 percent of it has been hostile.
The study finds:
- The networks spent 440 minutes, or 56 percent, focused on Trump's "personal controversies," compared with 185 minutes, or 38 percent, on Clinton's controversies.
- Trump's treatment of women got 102 minutes of evening news airtime; Clinton's age and health, and her personal meal server garnered 93 minutes combined.
MRC said it analyzed 588 evening news stories that either discussed or mentioned the presidential campaign on the major networks' evening newscasts from July 29 through Oct. 20.
"Even when they were critical of Hillary Clinton — for concealing her pneumonia, for example, or mischaracterizing the FBI investigation of her e-mail server — network reporters always maintained a respectful tone in their coverage," the study found.
"This was not the case with Trump, who was slammed as embodying 'the politics of fear,' or a 'dangerous' and 'vulgar' 'misogynistic bully' who had insulted vast swaths of the American electorate," the MRC analysis finds.
Rich Noyes, director of research for the MRC, said the result didn't surprise him.
"I think most people got the sense that this was a hostile place for Trump, the establishment media," he told Politico.
"I would say looking at the big picture, the Trump campaign and to a lesser extent Republicans in general wanted this to be a referendum on Obama … the Clinton campaign, the Democrats, once Trump was picked wanted this be a referendum on Donald Trump. Television news has for the past 12 weeks has been giving the Democrats the campaign they wanted."