By Asish Samson

US President Donald Trump has experienced unprecedented hostility and bias from most of the mainstream media ever since he announced his run for the Presidency and even more so after he took office. The mainstream media has repeatedly denied any such thing claiming they were “unbiased and unprejudiced” but,the recently released numbers by the Media Research Centre has left them red faced and embarrassed. According to a new study conducted on all major broadcast news networks including ABC,NBC and CBS by the Media Research Centre has revealed that 90% of the coverage of Trump has been negative. Over the last six months 91% of coverage has largely been negative.

In September there have been 359 negative statements of Trump while only 31 were positive. In October the negative statements rose to 453 vs 41 positive statements. In November, 320 negative statements against 33 positive ones. That is 1,132 negatives statements versus just 105 positive statements in just the three months alone. This is crystal clear evidence of a negative bias against Trump and his administration.

Its not that the media just reported negative aspects of his Presidency they have actually neutral and even good issues against Trump to paint the negative picture and portray his administration as destructive or a failure.

For example, during Hurricane Harvey in Houston MSNBC described Trump’s visit very strangely as “too soon”. The NY Times singled out Melania Trump for wearing high heels to Houston even though she had brought sneakers to change midway. During Hurricane Irma CNN, Instead of talking about the Hurricanes impact and destruction went on and on about how Trump was “wrong on climate change”. During the Charlottesville riots the mainstream media repeatedly condemned Trump for not responding fast enough even though he had responded on the same day and multiple times thereafter. And then when he made the initial statement they described it as “hateful, bigoted” and “incredibly unpresidential” even though he blamed both sides for the riots. During the Berkeley and Boston anti-free speech riots they blamed Trump for the so called “hate filled environment” even though it was the liberals and the anti-Trump protesters who were rioting and burning furniture and public property. Even during the recent New York subway suicide bombing attempt, CNN was busy talking about how many Diet Cokes Trump drinks and how much time he spends on television. And in some of the most bizarre news articles ever written, Newsweek, Buzzfeed, IBtimes UK ran lengthy pieces that criticised how Trump drinks water from a water bottle. Yes, they ran entire articles on how Trump was holding the bottle wrong with two hands as if that has been deciding elections all over the world since the past century. They even went into length about the different size and variations of water bottle and how they should be held. All for Trump.

This is in stark contrast to the media from the past 8 years under Obama which always strived so hard to maintain a peaceful and rosy picture of his administration even though it dropped more bombs on foreign countries and deported more people than George W. Bush and unemployment reached a record high and the national debt tripled. The media even portrayed the Obama presidency as entirely “scandal free” while ignoring the outrageous Fast and Furious Scandal, The Hezbollah Drug trade cover up, The Iran hostage and ransom issue, IRS targeting of conservative organisations among many others.
But, Trump didn’t leave the media alone to suffer its illusions. He repeatedly took on the media on twitter highlighting every false story and wrong information. He called them out in press conferences many times. He used nicknames against most of them like the “Fake news CNN” and the “ Failing NY Times” tags which struck his followers minds. The media too were found wanting in accuracy many times. CNN’s story about White House communications director’s links to the Russian investigation turned out be false. CNN had to retract the story and 3 journalists including a Pulitzer Prize winner lost their jobs. The New York Times omitted two key pieces of evidence in their Russian Influence story which proved beyond doubt that there was no wrong doing from Trump’s part. Many news media outlets have also highlighted a few select aspects of the Russian Investigations while repeatedly burying official quotes which stated that no proof of collusion between Trump and Russia could be established.
The amusing part is that most of these news media outlets and their narratives have repeatedly failed to recognise that their stories and bias has little to no effect on Trump or his support base. Surely they would do well to remember that all these would only alienate neutral voters and strengthen the resolve of Trump supporters.