There were other changes regarding White House press correspondents now that Trump was in office. The Trump administration had considered moving the White House press briefing to another location so they could include more reporters since the briefing room is rather small. One location considered was the White House Conference Center, which is across the street from the White House, and another was the Old Executive Office Building which is right next door. The Establishment media cried about a ‘lack of transparency,’ even though this move would have expanded the number of reporters who had access to the president and the press secretary.
Then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, “I know some of the folks in the press are uptight about this and I understand. The only thing that’s been discussed is whether or not the initial press conferences are going to be in that small press room. For the people listening to this that don’t know this, the press room that people see on TV is very, very tiny◦— 49 people fit in that press room.”317
He continued, “We had like 500 or 600 folks at the press conference last week so we started thinking, ‘if we can have more people involved [rather] than less people involved, that would be a good thing’◦— that’s what this is about.”318 They decided not to move locations, but came up with a way to include more reporters by allowing them to call in on Skype, the video conferencing service from anywhere in the country.319
After the very first press briefing of the Trump administration the liberal media were complaining that the first outlets called on to ask questions weren’t CNN, or The Washington Post, but instead the New York Post, and then the second question went to the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), and the third went to Univision, the Spanish-language network.
CNN’s Jim Acosta even went on air and complained about the seating arrangement at one of the president’s press conferences since he was placed in one of the back rows, saying it was the equivalent of being sent to Siberia.320
“If you’re legacy media and have been trading on that access for decades, when the new guy comes in and gets your access, it’s enraging,” said Sean Davis, a co-founder of The Federalist. “This is legacy outlets acting like an entitled monopoly or a cartel when someone new comes in and does the job better than they do.”321
The liberal media kept crying about Trump not calling on them enough during his press conferences. Politico complained, “President Donald Trump on Wednesday continued his streak of calling only on conservative-leaning outlets at his bilateral press conferences with foreign leaders,” saying, “During his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday afternoon, Trump called on David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Katie Pavlich, the editor of TownHall.com.”322
As I’m sure you recall, CNN’s Jim Acosta was acting more like a protester than a reporter during one press conference, literally yelling at the president and interrupting him, causing Trump to point at him and declare, “You are fake news!” Maybe someone should tell CNN that the First Amendment’s protection of the Freedom of the Press means that the government won’t shut down media outlets by forcing them out of business, it doesn’t guarantee that the president or his press secretary has to invite them to the White House or answer their questions.
Liberal Bias Confirmed
It seems only the liberal media denies that there is a liberal bias problem in the media, but decades of studies and polls (not to mention common sense) have proven an overwhelming bias in their coverage of just about everything. A Harvard study analyzing the media coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office found that 80% of it was negative.323 Of course that was obvious to anyone old enough to pay attention during the election, but it was surprising that Harvard, a very liberal university, would actually investigate the matter.
The study analyzed reports from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal; as well as CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, and even the BBC, and found the average coverage was 80% negative. Also not surprising was that CNN’s coverage was 93% negative. Fox News, on the other hand, was shown to be 52% negative and 48 percent positive, which fits in almost perfectly with their trademarked slogan “Fair & Balanced.” Professor Thomas E. Peterson, who conducted the study, said, “The nation’s watchdog has lost much of its bite and won’t regain it until the public perceives it as an impartial broker, applying the same reporting standards to both parties.”324
This kind of slanted coverage is certainly nothing new. A famous study of liberal bias in the American media was conducted in 1986 and found that most journalists working for the major national news outlets were Democrats with liberal views on issues like gay rights, abortion, affirmative action, and welfare programs.325 The study, later published in a book called The Media Elite, gathered its data by conducting surveys of journalists at the Big Three broadcast news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), along with print outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek.
It concluded that because liberals dominated most news organizations, their coverage reflected their political attitudes both consciously and unconsciously; even if they didn’t think they were being biased because they unconsciously believed that their views were ‘correct,’ so in their minds they didn’t see their coverage as biased at all.
A decade later in 1997, another major study of journalists was conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and that found that 61% of reporters leaned Democrat, but only 15% leaned Republican.326 24% of those surveyed appeared to be independent.327
In 2002 a professor at Dartmouth College published his research on media bias in his book Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues, which also showed that most mainstream media in America present liberal views in a more favorable light.328
Another study in 2005 by researchers at UCLA found a “strong liberal bias” at most mainstream media outlets with the exception of Fox News and The Washington Times.329 A 2007 study at Harvard University also confirmed a liberal bias in television news.330 They noted that as soon as the 2008 presidential campaign kicked off that, “Democrat Barack Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois, enjoyed by far the most positive treatment of the major candidates during the first five months of the year,” and that, “the press overall has been more positive about Democratic candidates and more negative about Republicans.” They calculated that in the first five months of the year just 12% of the coverage of John McCain, the Republican frontrunner, was positive.
In 2008 a study looked into political donations made by employees at NBC, ABC, and CBS and found that over one million dollars was given to the Democrat Party from 1,160 different people at those networks.331 It also found that the Republican Party only received $142,863 from just 193 employees.332 If you do the math, the Democrat Party got seven times as much money from people who worked at the Big Three networks, and six times as many employees donated to the Democrats vs. the Republicans.
After the study was published, NBC News surprisingly admitted, “Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.”333