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Study: 91 percent of coverage on evening newscasts was negative to Donald Trump

A whopping 91 percent of news coverage about Donald Trump on the three broadcast nightly newscasts over the past 12 weeks has been 'hostile', a new study finds.

The study, conducted by the conservative Media Research Center, found that not only has Trump received significantly more broadcast network news coverage than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but nearly all of that coverage (91%) has been hostile, according to the study.

In addition, the networks spent far more airtime focusing on the personal controversies involving Trump, such as his treatment of women, than controversies surrounding Clinton, such as her email practices or the Clinton Foundation.

For the study, MRC analyzed all 588 evening news stories that either discussed or mentioned the presidential campaign on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from July 29 through October 20 (including weekends). Of the total newscasts, the networks devoted 29 percent of their time to the campaign. The study did not include comments from the campaigns or candidates themselves, instead focusing on what the correspondents, anchors, expert commentators, and voters on the street said in order to try and hone in on any sort of slant from the networks.

Though neither candidate was necessarily celebrated, Clinton largely just stayed out of the line of fire.

"Even when they were critical of Hillary Clinton — for concealing her pneumonia, for example, or mischaracterizing the FBI investigation of her e-mail server — network reporters always maintained a respectful tone in their coverage," the study found. "This was not the case with Trump, who was slammed as embodying “the politics of fear,” or a “dangerous” and “vulgar” “misogynistic bully” who had insulted vast swaths of the American electorate."

The 2005 tape of Trump making lewd comments about women and other allegations of his mistreatment of women was by far the most covered topic, garnering 102 minutes of coverage. Questions about Clinton's age and health and her personal email server were the next most covered topics, garnering 93 minutes combined.

“It doesn’t really surprise me, I think most people got the sense that this was a hostile place for Trump, the establishment media," said Rich Noyes, director of research for the MRC. "I would say looking at the big picture, the Trump campaign and to a lesser extent Republicans in general wanted this to be a referendum on Obama … the Clinton campaign, the Democrats, once Trump was picked wanted this be a referendum on Donald Trump. Television news has for the past 12 weeks has been giving the Democrats the campaign they wanted.”

In a somewhat related study, television columnist and tracker Andrew Tyndall noted on Monday that issues coverage on the nightly news thus far this year "has been virtually non-existent."

"Of the 32 minutes total, terrorism (17 mins) and foreign policy (7 mins) towards the Middle East (Israel-ISIS-Syria-Iraq) have attracted some attention. Gay rights, immigration and policing have been mentioned in passing," Tyndall notes. "No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates' terms, not on the networks' initiative."