ABC News program World News Tonight has shown an overall positive spin on its reporting of Vice President Kamala Harris, versus its overall negative reporting on former President Donald Trump, according to a recent report.
A report from the Media Research Center’s (MRC) NewsBusters found that an analysis of “100 campaign stories” aired on World News Tonight, hosted by David Muir, found “25 clearly positive statements” made about Harris from “reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources,” which represented a 100 percent positive spin on the outlets reporting for Harris.
The 100 campaign stories that MRC reviewed stemmed from July 21, when Harris entered the 2024 presidential race, to September 6.
An analysis of ABC’s reporting on Trump found “five clearly positive statements” and “66 negative statements,” representing a 93 percent negative spin on the outlets reporting for Trump.
The MRC’s NewsBusters report noted that “ABC’s reporters and anchors either jumped in to criticize Trump themselves, or broadcast negative comments from non-partisan sources to impart a heavily negative spin to the former President’s coverage.”
In one example of the biased reporting from the outlet on their coverage of Trump versus Harris, during an interview between Muir and Trump in January 2017, Muir seemed to imply that Trump was not presidential for speaking about his popular support, though Muir kept asking him about it.
DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I just have one more question on this. And it’s — it’s bigger picture. You took some heat after your visit to the CIA in front of that hallowed wall, 117 stars — of those lost at the CIA. You talked about other things. But you also talked about crowd size at the inauguration, about the size of your rallies, about covers on Time magazine. And I just wanna ask you when does all of that matter just a little less? When do you let it roll off your back now that you’re the president?
During the interview, Trump continued to talk about his speech and how other outlets such as Fox News described it as being “great,” while ABC News and “other networks covered it very inaccurately.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: And they tried to demean. Excuse me?
DAVID MUIR: Not me personally.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Not you personally but your network — and they tried to demean the speech. And I know when things are good or bad. A poll just came out on my inauguration speech which was extraordinary that people loved it. Loved and liked. And it was an extraordinary poll.
DAVID MUIR: I guess that’s what I’m getting at. You talked about the poll, the people loving your inaugural speech and the size of your…
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, because you bring it up.
DAVID MUIR: I’m asking, well, on day one you….
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, you just brought it up. I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t wanna — talk about the inauguration speech. But I think I did a very good job and people really liked it. You saw the poll. Just came out this morning. You bring it up. I didn’t bring it up.
DAVID MUIR: So, polls and crowd size and covers on Time, those still matter now that you’re here as president.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, you keep bringing it up. I had a massive amount of people here. They were showing pictures that were very unflattering, as unflattering — from certain angles — that were taken early and lots of other things. I’ll show you a picture later if you’d like of a massive crowd.
In another instance, during an interview in August 2020 President Joe Biden and Harris, who were the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees at the time, Muir asked Biden if he blamed Trump for the deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, and labeled the Trump administration as negligent:
MUIR: We have so much we want to get to here, but I do want to get right to the heaviness of the moment in our country. The pandemic — more than 170,000 American lives lost now — Mr. Vice President, you have said that people are dying because of this negligence. Do you blame President Trump for lives lost?
BIDEN: I don’t blame him for the COVID crisis. I blame him for walking away and not dealing with the solutions. The idea of sayingg that this is going to go away, that some miracle is going to happen, there’s all talk about the crazy things about bleach and using, I mean it’s just, he hasn’t listened to the scientists.
MUIR: But do you think the negligence on the part of this administration has cost lives?
In other instances, Muir has congratulated Harris on making “history,” and cut off former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) for pointing out that Democrats have previously denied election results.
“Look, David, this goes all the way back to 2000 with George W. Bush when you had supporters of Al Gore who, even after Vice President Gore conceded the election and certified it himself as the president of the Senate, refused to accept George W. Bush as legitimate,” Christie said on Tuesday. “You’ve had Hillary Clinton say that she still doesn’t accept the 2016 election results as legitimate. This is a very dangerous thing in this country, which was brought to a new level in 2020 when Donald Trump —”
Muir immediately interjected, stressing that Gore “stood before the nation and actually conceded and did something very different than what we witnessed.”
This comes as Muir, along with Linsey Davis, an anchor on ABC News Live Prime will moderate the presidential debate on Tuesday between Harris and Trump.
The MRC’s report also noted that coverage from CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News showed “highly positive coverage” for the vice president, while the former president received negative coverage.
However, the coverage of Harris on CBS was found to be 94 percent positive, while Trump’s was 77 percent negative. NBC’s coverage of Harris was found to have been 71 percent positive, and 86 percent negative for Trump.
