American voters, especially Republicans, are getting shortchanged on the GOP presidential primary race by TV networks that are obsessed with Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Jeb Bush and essentially telling viewers who matters — and who doesn’t — in the contest, according to a new analysis.
Since the race has heated up, TV news has focused on Trump and Carson, boosting their on-air time while cutting that of Bush and 11 other contenders and not giving former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore a second of attention.
Rich Noyes, research director for the Media Research Center, said that the skewed time candidates get on TV is echoed by the polls and who even gets to appear at presidential debates.
Essentially, getting little TV time means lower polls and getting skipped in the debates, he found.
“During the past three months, the big broadcast networks have essentially stopped covering most of the GOP presidential candidates, a lack of national news attention that presumably affects the national poll ratings used to determine which candidates are included in televised debates,” wrote Noyes.
“The networks’ lack of coverage may be justified based on the polls, but it can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as candidates who are deprived of news coverage can’t hope to generate new support. Instead of covering the top 10 Republican candidates, or the entire current field of 14 candidates, the networks have now essentially pared down the field to five candidates: Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina,” he added in the revealing network news study provided to Secrets.
Dominating the coverage field has been Trump, who received 266 minutes of coverage from CBS, NBC, and ABC network news from August to October. That is more than double what he received earlier this year.
Carson also saw a rise, but to just 55 minutes, while Bush, who has plummeted in the polls recently, saw his coverage fall 12 percent and colored with themes like “panic.”
Noyes also mocked the network’s 110 minutes coverage of Vice President Joe Biden’s dance with a run, suggesting that they should be able to give at least as much to the other GOP candidates.
“Winnowing the GOP field is the job of rank-and-file Republican voters, not the news media. If the networks are claiming to cover the presidential race ‘every step of the way,’ as one network likes to say, then they need to cover all of the major candidates, such as those who are participating in the prime time national debates,” wrote Noyes.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
