A Media Research Center (MRC) study in February found that CNN bashed President Donald Trump during its Wuhan coronavirus coverage.
However, CNN needs to look in a mirror because its coverage in January and February barely covered the coronavirus outbreak during the impeachment trial.
CNN avoided many topics, not just the coronavirus, during the impeachment:
Yet a Media Research Center analysis finds CNN’s own coverage of the virus in January and early February was incredibly deficient, as the liberal cable network was reluctant to devote much time to anything unrelated to Trump’s impeachment.MRC analysts examined all of CNN’s daily programming from 6:00 am to midnight EST between January 17 (the first day any news network discussed the coronavirus) through February 5. Our analysts found that CNN’s January coronavirus airtime averaged 12 minutes per day, or about 40 seconds per hour. That works out to a meager 1.6 percent of their total coverage, even after excluding an average of 21 minutes of ad time per hour on the network.
The coronavirus sneaked into the news by January. Everyone knew it was a big deal because China closed down shop, including celebrations of the Chinese New Year.
ABC, NBC, and CBS jumped onto the coronavirus news right away:
By comparison, the three major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) projected a clear sense of urgency from the start. On average they spent two and a half minutes per evening newscast on the coronavirus during those same days — and their newscasts are only about 19 minutes long (minus commercials and teases). That comes out to a rate of five minutes of coronavirus coverage per hour (14% of all coverage), or nearly eight times the rate of CNN.Additionally, the coronavirus outbreak was the lead-off story in 19 out of 57 (33%) of the network evening broadcasts. During those same 20 days, CNN made the virus its lead story of just four of its 360 hours of programming (or slightly more than one percent).
Even we knew the coronavirus would become a major news story. Leslie devoted most of her posts to the virus to the point that I suggested we make one post about it and add information as it came out during the day.
By the way, Leslie was one of the first in the country to write about coronavirus and dedicate her time to inform everyone about it.
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