***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
One more indictment from the Special Counsel came tumbling down the pike on Thursday, when a former White House counsel for President Obama was charged with lying to investigators about his foreign lobbying work for Ukraine. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort was convicted of. But despite the similarities, the airtime dedicated to the indictment by the broadcast networks was grossly lopsided.
On Thursday, the combined airtime allowed by ABC, CBS, and NBC for the indictment of former White House lawyer Greg Craig was one minute and 15 seconds. Both ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News sprinted past the story with 16 and 17 seconds respectively. NBC Nightly News offered a little bit more time (42 seconds) but it was still under a minute.
With the collusion conspiracy on their minds, those same networks went into a feeding frenzy in late October, 2017.
NewsBusters previously documented that following the indictments of Paul Manafort and deputy chair Rick Gates, ABC, CBS, and NBC dedicated 33 minutes and nine seconds on related news, while spending 22 minutes and 14 seconds on all other news for the day. Doing the math, that means they spent 60 percent (59.86%) of their total airtime on news sparked by the indictments.
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