Broadcasters remain obsessed with President Trump, and not in a good way. A new study from the conservative Media Research Center found that ABC, CBS and NBC staged a “freak out” following Mr. Trump’s recent series of tweets which accused former President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in New York City.
The tweets — which began Saturday — were very popular on the morning and evening shows of ABC, CBS and NBC. Since then, the “Big Three” networks devoted a generous 107 minutes, 33 seconds to refuting the president’s claims.
But Mr. Trump was onto something.
“In contrast, new reports from previous weeks suggesting the Obama administration did, in fact, initiate surveillance were essentially ignored at the time. For example, when the New York Times initially reported that members of Trump’s team were under surveillance before the inauguration, the story only got 13 seconds of coverage — and only on the CBS Evening News,” write Mike Ciandella and Rich Noyes, the analysts who tracked the coverage.
“Back on January 19, when President Obama was still in office, the New York Times web site reported as fact that the government was looking at ‘intercepted communications’ between Trump associates and Russian officials. The story appeared the next morning, Inauguration Day, on the front page, above the fold,” the analysts noted.
The Times was clear in their account.
“American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said,” The Times story said.
“It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House,” the account noted.
The revelations were essentially ignored by the broadcasters except CBS, which gave it a scanty 13 seconds. Mssrs. Ciandella and Noyes conducted a Nexis search of the networks’ Jan. 19 and 20 broadcasts to find that indeed, CBS was the sole network on the story.
“CBS News has learned that investigators have obtained information from human sources and are delving into electronic communications between individuals connected to Mr. Trump and Russian officials,” CBS correspondent Jeff Pegues noted in his report at the time.
His reporting, the analysts concluded, “would appear to confirm exactly the kind of surveillance the media are scoffing at today.”
• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.
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