***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
Since Empire actor Jussie Smollett first came forward with his hoax of being a victim of an alleged hate crime on January 29, the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have spent a whopping 157 minutes on the story during their flagship morning/evening new programs. They spent all that time on what was an increasingly apparent hoax, but the infamous torture of an autistic white man at the hands of black teen and broadcast live over Facebook, drew a little over 24 minutes. Both cases happened in Chicago.
As NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck documented early Sunday morning, between January 29 and February 14 the networks spent 101 minutes and 22 seconds helping to push Smollett’s claims of being assaulted by racist and homophobic Trump supporters. Then, when the facts started to show that Smollett may have orchestrated and paid for the assault, the networks spent an additional 55 minutes and 23 seconds on it (between February 15 and 18).
All tallies in this study include ABC’s Good Morning America/World News Tonight, CBS’s This Morning/Evening News, NBC’s Today/Nightly News, and their weekend equivalents.
In sharp contrast, when a young white man was kidnapped for two days in the run-up to then President-elect Trump’s inauguration and tortured live on Facebook by black teens, the story was there and gone in just four days. As Houck also exposed on January 4, 2017, both ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News skipped the story while CBS Evening News allocated a mere 27 seconds.
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