By Rudy Takala - MediaITE


CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday claimed “entire media companies essentially exist to tear down” former Vice President Joe Biden — but that there was a dearth of media seeking to undermine President Donald Trump.

“When you see entire media companies essentially exist to tear down Joe Biden, is there an equivalent of that on the left, tearing down Trump?” Stelter asked asked a guest, Errin Haines, during a roundtable segment on the Sunday edition of his weekly program, Reliable Sources.

“There really isn’t,” Haines replied. “It’s really a diet of this type of information that a lot of these voters are getting. A lot of the voters … when I interview them, I do hear them saying a lot of the talking points that sound very familiar from some of these shows which I try to listen to when I’m out on the campaign trail or when I’m at home, watching TV.”

The remarks came during a panel about Fox news and “radio stars” who Stelter said were “fueling hatred.” He added that the problem was “more severe” on the right, a comment that another guest, Nicole Hemmer, agreed with earlier in the segment. Citing radio king Rush Limbaugh, Hemmer said conservatives in media had “a sort of habit of attacking Democrats that goes pretty far back.”

Researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy might disagree with Stelter. The school published a 2017 study that found 93 percent of Trump coverage on CNN was negative for the president, compared to 7 percent that was positive. They said the figures were the same for NBC, while finding 91 percent of coverage by CBS was negative for the president, in addition to 87 percent by The New York Times and 83 percent by The Washington Post.

Fox News came the closest to being impartial, researchers said. The study found 52 percent of coverage by Fox was negative compared to 48 percent that was positive.

Watch above via CNN.