« on: March 26, 2014, 02:03:37 pm »
Published: 3/25/2014 10:55 AM ET
Unquestionably, ObamaCare is the central political issue of 2014. As the midterm election campaign moves forward, liberal politicians will have to justify their support for a program that has cost millions of individuals their insurance; will raise premiums for most small businesses; imposes hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes; and will cost, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the equivalent of two million jobs over the next three years.
But so far this year, the three network evening newscasts have minimized, spun or ignored every negative development about ObamaCare, while at the same time touting staged pro-ObamaCare publicity stunts, such as the President’s appearance on a Web-based comedy show in March.
A new study from the Media Research Center finds that long before the saga of the missing Malaysian jet commandeered the airwaves, ABC, CBS and NBC had apparently decided that ObamaCare was not a worthy topic for their evening newscasts. MRC analysts reviewed each newscast (including weekends) from January 1 through March 24, 2014. The review found just 29 stories that mentioned ObamaCare; 12 of those were full reports, while the other 17 were short items (under 30 seconds in length) read by the news anchor, or passing references to the health care law in longer political stories.
During this time, the NBC Nightly News aired just a single full report on ObamaCare — a largely celebratory piece on January 1 about the start of what fill-in anchor Lester Holt called “a new era in health care in this country.” Including that piece, Nightly News has only offered five minutes and five seconds of coverage of the health care law so far this year. For context, the total time of all news stories on the NBC Nightly News during the same period (excluding teasers and promos) is more than 24 hours, meaning NBC has spent barely one-third of one percent of its available evening news airtime talking about the health care law.
http://www.mrc.org/media-reality-check/mrc-study-network-tv-buries-obamacares-bad-news
Logged
"The Tea Party has a right to feel cheated.
When does the Republican Party, put in the majority by the Tea Party, plan to honor its commitment to halt the growth of the Federal monolith and bring the budget back into balance"?
