Media obsessed with Donald Trump, 15 GOP candidates ignored
Media coverage of Donald Trump appears to be good for ratings, even at the expense of covering the other Republican candidates. In fact, analysis by CNN’s “Reliable Sources” indicates that Trump is getting more coverage on the nightly news than his 16 rivals — combined
The report states that “Trump talk” totaled 36 minutes and 30 seconds on nightly newscasts from NBC, ABC and CBS. The next-closest candidate was Jeb Bush, who received 9 minutes and 22 seconds of coverage.
“He is the one who’s made this race interesting,” New York magazine columnist Frank Rich said on Sunday’s “Reliable Sources.”
Rather than saying that Trump is taking away oxygen from other candidates, Rich said, “my feeling is, he is the oxygen.”
ABC’s “World News Tonight” spent nearly twice as much time — 15 minutes and 37 seconds — covering Trump as the “CBS Evening News,” which spent 8 minutes and 35 seconds. “NBC Nightly News” landed in the middle with 12 minutes and 18 seconds.
According to the findings, third was John Kasich, who received 2 minutes 29 seconds of coverage between August 7 and 21. Marco Rubio received 1 minute 35 seconds, and Chris Christie got 1 minute 16 seconds.
Some lower-ranking candidates were barely mentioned at all.
Ben Carson was mentioned for 11 seconds combined; Rick Perry was mentioned once, for 6 seconds, by NBC; Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee for 3 seconds each; and Lindsey Graham, just for 1 second, by CBS.
Graham, for example, was mentioned on “CBS Evening News” in a plug for the network’s Sunday talk show “Face the Nation,” where he was a guest. That promotion is not in this evaluation.
A separate analysis of GOP candidate coverage on The New York Times web site also showed a dramatic gap between Trump and the rest of the field.
The data accounts for all mentions of candidate names on NYTimes.com between August 7 and 22.
Trump led with 318 mentions, followed far behind by Bush with 180, Rubio with 115, Scott Walker with 105, and Christie with 84.
At the bottom: Rick Santorum was mentioned 17 times, George Pataki was mentioned 13 times, and Jim Gilmore was mentioned 9 times.
[…] the GOP candidates has been a challenge and quite revealing. In fact, earlier this month it became clear how disproportionate the coverage has been: Donald Trump gets over 30 minutes of coverage on the big networks, Jeb Bush gets 9 minutes and no […]