The 2016 Democratic candidates and their surrogates have earned a decent amount of airtime in the last month from Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, but it’s doesn’t come close to the amount of time that the major cable news networks have spent covering the GOP teams.
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and their surrogates earned a combined total of 521 minutes of coverage between April 21 and March 15 from the three news groups, according to a Media Research Center study, which was restricted to weekday prime-time hours and covered more than 235 hours of programming.
MSNBC gave the Democratic teams 296 minutes of airtime during this time period, and CNN gave 214 minutes.
Fox News spent a mere 11 minutes on the Democratic candidates and their surrogates.
In comparison, the three remaining GOP presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and their supporters took in a whopping 1,641 minutes of coverage in the four-week period analyzed by MRC.
CNN spent 729 minutes interviewing the GOP candidates and their surrogates, and Fox spent 666 minutes on it. MSNBC dedicated 246 minutes covering the Republicans presidential hopefuls and their supporters.
These numbers account for only sit-down interviews and town halls, and don’t take into account all the time that the cable news networks have spent on debate and campaign event coverage.
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There’s a reason for the difference in the amount of time CNN and MSNBC have given the Democratic candidates versus Fox.
“Since 2007, Democratic presidential candidates have generally boycotted Fox News, refusing to let the top-rated cable network host any of their presidential debates,” the MRC reported. “Earlier this year, Fox News anchor Bret Baier pressed DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz about ‘letting the Fox News debate team handle’ one of the then-upcoming debates; Schultz demurred.”
“At the same time, FNC’s core audience is decidedly right-of-center. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey of the Fox News audience found conservatives outnumbered liberals by a 6-to-1 margin (60 percent to 10 percent), while on shows such as Hannity, the gap was a whopping 78 to 5 percent. So FNC may have concluded — not unreasonably — that its audience is more interested in hearing from the GOP candidates and their surrogates than the Democrats,” the report added.
Fox’s lack of Democratic-related interviews accounts for the difference in the overall time that cable news networks have spent hosting Sanders and Clinton and their supporters.
Also notable: The time that Fox gave to GOP candidates and their supporters in the last month has been lopsided in Trump’s favor. CNN meanwhile skewed towards Cruz, and MSNBC was pretty evenly split between the three remaining GOP Republicans.
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When it comes to the Democratic candidates, CNN and MSNBC were again evenly split in regards to the time given to Clinton- and Sanders-related interviews.
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MRC added an important note on its tally of CNN’s coverage of Sanders and Clinton: “Not included in the interview tally: CNN’s Democratic debate between Clinton and Sanders, held on April 14. If it had been, the two-hour event would have added 60 minutes to Clinton’s tally (questions directed at her, plus her answers), and 52 minutes to Sanders.”
