Travis Luckenbaugh
Posts | Tools | Links
Is It Fair To Compare Biden's And Trump's Classified Documents Scandals?
Wed Jan 25, 2023 | 198 Words
FiveThirtyEight makes an interesting but not particularly surprising claim about media bias. How big is bias between news networks? FiveThirtyEight makes an interesting but not particularly surprising claim about media bias. How big is bias between news networks?

Headline:

The Mar-a-Lago raid got some coverage on cable … But not as much as the discoveries of Biden's papers

Detail:

But the coverage gap is due to one channel in particular. CNN has covered the stories the most equally…

But Fox News has covered Biden's scandal way more than it covered Trump's

FiveThirtyEight has arguments for why the two stories aren't worthy of equal coverage. Let's pretend the two stories have equal “controversy” which is easiest to test around each story's peak coverage. How partisan is each network?

Story Trump (R) Biden (D) Bias
Date of Peak 12 Aug 2022 12 Jan 2023
Segments
CNN 275 276 0.3 % D
MSNBC 389 237 39.1 % D
FOX 163 407 60.0 % R
Total 827 1072 22.9 % R

Bias is calculated as:

when R > D 
then `+ ${1-(R/D)*100}` % R 
else `+ ${1-(D/R)*100}` % D
    

I have no clue if this is a "fair" way to do it.