Tipsheet

No Shock: MSNBC Interrupted the GOP Convention an Ungodly Amount of Times

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  September 01, 2020 11:45 AM

I didn’t watch MSNBC during the Republican National Convention for obvious reasons. One, C-Span aired it uninterrupted. And two, there isn’t enough alcohol in the world to make me do so. Yet, the foot soldiers at the Media Research Center did, and they did not make me regret my decision. I knew it was going to be bad when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow cut into South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s speech because she said violent mobs were engulfing America’s cities. It’s not a lie, but MSNBC, in needing to keep America’s liberals blood pressures low, cut in to bring on…Seattle’s Jenny Durkan to push back. Yeah, the same mayor who allowed armed leftists seize a portion of her city was giving brought on to—you guessed it—blame Trump for the mayhem. You literally cannot make this up.

Yet, the crew at Newsbusters, Rich Noyes, Curtis Houck, and Scott Whitlock, crunched the numbers of times these clowns took “triggered” breaks in their RNC coverage, and to no one’s shock, they interrupted the GOP event far more than that of their Democratic Party allies the previous week. MSNBC was so triggered by the Republican Convention that it amounted to 200 minutes worth of interruptions (via Newsbusters):

ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and NBC all showed roughly as much of the Republican convention last week as they had the Democratic convention the week before. But not fair at all: while cable news let the Democratic advertisement run without any significant interruption, CNN and MSNBC refused to give the same consideration to Republicans, repeatedly stepping over the party-produced content to deplore and criticize what viewers were trying to watch.

The interruptions on MSNBC, in fact, were 600 TIMES greater during the Republican convention (201 minutes) than during the Democratic convention (21 seconds). On CNN, their analysts and advertising stepped on 78.5 minutes of the GOP convention, vs. just 12.5 minutes during the Democrats’ show, a five-to-one disparity.

Because the Republican convention included about 100 minutes more content (682 minutes total) than the Democratic program (583), broadcast viewers actually saw more of it: 222 minutes on ABC and NBC, vs. 191 and 173 minutes for the Democrats, respectively. CBS showed 226 minutes of the GOP convention, vs. 159 for the Democrats. On average, the three broadcast networks let their viewers see about 33% of the Republican convention, vs. 30% for the Democratic convention — a pretty balanced scorecard.

Cable, however, was a much more partisan story. During the Democratic convention, CNN and MSNBC essentially shut down and let viewers see the whole program; the only omissions were a few commercial interruptions on CNN, and those parts of the program that followed the main speech of the night (usually a musical performance and closing prayers delivered by clergy).

[…]

Of course, if they had wanted to, these networks could have tried to protect their audience from Democratic misinformation. FactCheck.org, for example, found misleading claims emanating from Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But the “watchdogs” at MSNBC and CNN never felt the need to break in.

But with the Republicans, CNN busted into the show 16 times for “analysis,” while MSNBC interrupted 28 times to mock or deride what had just been said. Add it all up, and CNN viewers missed out on 78.5 minutes of the convention program, while MSNBC concealed 201 minutes of the show.

Yeah, so not a shock, but still important to document and catalog these instances of extreme bias for our archives. To use when some liberal talking head, at some point, will peddle the nonsensical talking point that the media isn’t that biased, or better yet—these folks don’t take sides.