BROADCAST BIAS: Networks stay negative on Trump even after Iran ceasefire

“I get 93 percent bad publicity,” President Trump recently complained, and studies by the Media Research Center, where I work, have repeatedly shown that evening news coverage on broadcast networks is nearly 90 percent negative from month to month. How can this happen? Because these networks will find something negative no matter which direction the president or the country goes.

Its motto may seem like “Good news isn’t news.” Or maybe that’s not the big story.

Take the Artemis space mission to the moon. On April 1, in perhaps the most pivotal moment in American space history since 1972, ABC’s “Good Morning America” ​​broadcast seven anti-Trump news stories for more than 15 minutes before finally beginning to scan space. ABC was particularly interested in claiming that Trump was trying to undermine confidence in the midterm elections by pushing back on the inadequacies of mail-in voting.

Later in the day, when it became clear that the Artemis launch was a success, NBC correspondent Tom Costello asked for no flag waving for the United States: “I think it’s important and meaningful to take a minute and say, wow, we collectively as Americans, not as North Americans, but just as people, should be proud of the success here.” — that people can achieve this.”

WHY TRUMP RESPONSES THE IRAN WAR NEWS IN THE MEDIA VERY NEGATIVELY – INCREASED BY FCC’S RHETORICAL SUPPORT

Then there was the brave rescue of an airman from Iranian territory, which is certainly very positive news. But on the Easter edition of CBS’ “Sunday Morning” they devoted four minutes and four seconds to the war in Iran, but spent only 43 seconds of that on the rescued airman, about 18% of their focus on Iran.

The rest was Pentagon correspondent David Martin, who presented experts critical of Trump’s threats to damage Iranian infrastructure. The first was former Obama aide Tess Bridgeman: “Destroying all power plants, threatening coercive action against civilian populations to bring a government to the negotiating table.” — That kind of thing is clearly illegal.” Martin also quoted former Reagan advisor Elliott Abrams as saying Trump’s message was completely wrong: “We want the Iranian people on our side.”

Then there was the brave rescue of an airman from Iranian territory, which is certainly very positive news. But on the Easter edition of “Sunday Morning” on CBS, they devoted four minutes and four seconds to the war in Iran, but only 43 seconds of that to the rescued airman.

News about Trump is so relentlessly negative that Iran’s Islamic theocracy, or what’s left of it, receives almost more positive press than the president. These networks talk about Trump punishing the Iranians, but they fail to focus on the hundreds of protesters murdered by the Iranian government in the weeks before the war began.

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Trump’s Easter message about Truth Social threatening Iran angered all the news anchors and reporters. “Open the damn Throat [of Hormuz]”You crazy bastards or you will live in Hell,” he wrote.

The next night, CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang argued the opposing view: “More than 100 international law experts argue in an open letter that bombing power plants amounts to a potential war crime. Trump said he was not concerned about that possibility.” “I hope I don’t have to do this,” he said. These threats are his unique negotiation method.

The networks easily find a hundred “experts” to accuse Trump of “war crimes,” but not the “experts” to accuse Iran of human rights violations.

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PBS located former military attorney Rachel Van Landingham, who was one of the signers of the open letter and wrote a series of abusive posts against Trump and Pete Hegseth on the MS NOW website. (PBS and MS NOW are indistinguishable.) He reliably criticized the president: “He threatens to implicate our military in war crimes, thus tarnishing their honor and spirit, and returning with moral damage. Why? Because the threat to destroy every bridge and every single power plant in the entire province of Iran is called an indiscriminate attack. It is a war crime.” The PBS expert omitted the term “war crime” 11 times in his interview.

When Trump declared a ceasefire on Tuesday, the TV news went shamelessly into reverse. Trump went on to create “TACO Tuesday” out of the war criminal and the liberal “Trump Has Always Been Afraid.” It sounds odd to describe Trump’s ordering a series of devastating military strikes on Iran as “cowardice,” but the mockery is part of the broadcast network’s toolbox.

CBS News’ streaming service hired Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong, who coined the term “TACO” last year to describe Trump’s method of tariff negotiations and how it roiled markets. He explained that he thought the acronym sounded funny and exaggerated Trump’s “obsession” with the Mexican border. All liberals clearly agreed.

The night’s comedians flocked in. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel commented: “So all day today everyone, especially the Iranian people, was wondering if their civilization was going to die tonight. The good news is, it didn’t. Of all TACO Tuesdays, it was TACO Tuesday. The president decided not to drop the chalupa for at least another two weeks.”

Similar to the ceasefire in Gaza, the networks remained negative, flagging every “chaotic” event indicating that the ceasefire was only partial, messy.

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The pattern never ends.

Trump’s coverage of the networks was negative even in the early days after Trump’s 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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No matter which way Trump goes, it’s always wrong.

Maybe that’s why the president calls it “fake news.”

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