(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) While reporting specifics on a new study of cable news leanings, Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple took a shot at CNN anchor Brian Stelter, NewsBusters reported.
Recently, Stelter invited researchers David Brookman and Joshua Kalla on his show after performing an experiment where they paid regular viewers of Fox News to watch CNN for an hour every day in the month of September 2020.
The report claims that viewers discovered Fox News was ignoring or downplaying news that made Republicans look bad and the Democrats look good.
“Both networks are really engaging in this partisan coverage filtering,” Kalla said in the interview. “It’s not about one side, it’s about the media writ large.”
Stelter accused Kalla of “bothsideism,” and was insistent that CNN is blameless in this situation. But, Kalla shows in his report that Fox has consistently higher average word counts in their news coverage than CNN does, leading one to believe that Fox is covering multiple views more thoroughly than CNN.
“But the report has data on the discrepancy,” the article reads. “On Sept. 15, 2020, President Donald Trump presided over the signing of normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.”
“On Fox News shows airing from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., the news racked up 1,278 words of coverage, according to the report, while the coverage on the equivalent CNN shows clocked in at just 84 words.”
In a discussion with Wemple, Kalla cited “Democratic elites violating COVID restrictions” as another topic with a significant information gap between the two networks, saying “Fox News’s shows covered [Nancy Pelosi’s unmasked salon visit] with 2,464 words, while CNN’s tallied 209 words.”
“What we’re showing is that CNN does engage partisan coverage filtering. They should be aware of that and can do better as a network,” Kalla told the Erik Wemple Blog.
