Despite the national debate over building the Keystone XL pipeline through middle America, this week’s showdown Senate vote on the issue and countless television ads on the topic, the nation’s three nightly news shows have devoted just over 11 minutes to the issue.
And that’s over more than a year, from Jan. 1, 2014, to Jan. 19, 2015, according to a shocking new study from the Media Research Center.
The new study, provided to Secrets, found that “CBS Evening News” has provided the “most” coverage, at six minutes, two seconds, followed by “NBC Nightly News” at three minutes, 27 seconds, and “ABC World News” at one minute, 35 seconds.
MRC said that there is no reason for the news blackout other than a liberal media bias, considering repeated votes on the oil line and President Obama’s promise to use his first veto this year on legislation coming out of Congress to OK the pipeline. The Senate this week is poised to approve construction of the pipeline from Canada with a veto-proof margin.
“The Keystone pipeline plan has hurdled almost every major obstacle in its way. The State Department environmentally cleared the pipeline construction and estimated it could create as many as 42,000 jobs. And the Nebraska Supreme Court, this month, ruled the plan could go forward as well. So far the only things standing in its way are Democratic senators, a Barack Obama-threatened veto, and environmental activists. Which is probably why the network evening shows have been so reluctant to cover the project,” said the MRC analysis.
“Beginning on January 31, 2014, when the State Department declared it saw no environmental problems with the project, to last December’s votes in the House and Senate and this month’s coverage of Obama’s veto threat, the Big Three network evening shows have offered a total of four full stories (CBS 2, ABC 1, NBC 1). There were also nine other quick references two briefs and seven mentions (CBS 5, NBC 3, ABC 1) on the pipeline,” added MRC.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
