MRC Study: ABC, CBS and NBC Cast GOP as Debt Ceiling Villains
On Election Day 2010, then-CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith posed a hypothetical question about newly-elected Republicans to Ann Coulter: “There’ll be a routine vote, for instance, to increase the debt ceiling and the Tea Party guys are going to say, ‘Over my dead body,’ and the government comes to a screeching halt. Then what happens?” The conservative author confidently predicted: “Well, the media will blame the Republicans.” And that’s precisely what has occurred. A Media Research Center study of the Big Three network evening and morning programs finds that, when it came to assigning blame for lack of a debt ceiling resolution, ABC, CBS and NBC’s coverage has placed the overwhelming majority of the blame on Republicans’ doorstep. MRC analysts watched all 202 stories on the debt ceiling from July 1 through July 22, looking for statements which assigned blame or responsibility for the failure to reach a settlement. Of the 85 stories that included such statements, the skew was lopsidedly anti-Republican, with 56 stories (66%) mainly assigning them the blame for the impasse. Even though Democrats control both the Senate and the White House, only 17 network stories (20%) suggested they bore more responsibility, a greater than three-to-one disparity (see chart). Twelve stories offered a balanced discussion of which party ought to be blamed. [METHOD: Analysts reviewed each story, then tallied all reporter statements and soundbites which clearly assigned responsibility to Republicans or Democrats. If the majority of statements within that story assigned blame to one party or the other, it was scored as “blaming Republicans” or “blaming Democrats.” If the story contained a balanced number of statements, it was recorded as “balanced.” ] Of the Big Three networks, NBC was the most likely to pin the blame on the GOP, by a 27 to 6 margin (with four stories assigning equal blame).
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on July 27, 2011. Filed under