Brent Bozell has this nice column discussing bias on media morning talk shows. Unsurprisingly, the major networks gave overwhelming coverage--the vast majority of which was positive--to Democrat candidates.
Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center assessed all morning-show coverage on the Big Three from Jan. 1 through July 31. In those 517 campaign segments, the networks offered nearly twice as many segments to Democrats as Republicans, a margin of 284 to 152. (Another 66 stories focused on both parties.) When the sample is narrowed down just to interviews with the candidates or their spouses and staffers, the morning shows gave out nearly three times as much free airtime to Democrats (4 hours, 35 minutes) as they gave to Republicans (1 hour and 44 minutes).
ABC's "Good Morning America" was the worst, with 119 segments on the Democrats to just 51 for the Republicans. And try this for impartiality, ABC-style: The network offered sprawling, positive "town hall" segments to only two presidential candidates so far this year: 38 minutes for John Edwards and 26 minutes for Hillary Clinton.
No one would ever accuse morning talk shows of being hotbeds of that vaunted tough questioning journalism the MSM loves to boast about. But that doesn't mean shows like Good Morning America should be free infomercials for the candidates. Shouldn't Hillary Clinton have to report those in-kind contributions from ABC?
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