Are they really talking about the same thing? Media coverage of Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial in New York differs completely between American news channels, deprived of images of the hearings.
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Fox News, MSNBC, CNN: the three major national channels appear as divided as America to recount the trial of a politician who is himself one of the most divisive.
Monday at 8 p.m. in Washington, prime time after a day of hearings devoted to the testimony against Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, the three channels displayed three different banners at the bottom of their screen:
Fox News: Prosecutors’ ‘Cohen, a groupie turned explosive weapon’.
MSNBC: “Cohen paints a damning portrait of Trump during his testimony.”
CNN: “‘Go do it’: Cohen says Trump didn’t want to wait any longer to pay Stormy Daniels.”
The first is the preferred channel of conservatives, the second is appreciated by a progressive audience and CNN aims to be more factual, although often seen as leaning more towards the Democratic side.
All three have been covering for weeks, each in their own way, this trial where Donald Trump is being tried for accounting falsifications in a case of hidden payments to a former porn star, Stormy Daniels.
On Fox News, according to presenters and speakers, the trial of the former president and current candidate for the White House is “totally political” and the key witness Michael Cohen “crooked”.
“It’s a shame that this case has gone this far,” conservative lawyer Jonathan Turley thundered Monday on Fox News. Words similar to those of Donald Trump himself, who accuses the judge presiding over the trial of being “corrupt”.
Credibility
Are we really talking about the same issue on MSNBC? “I think (Michael Cohen) appears very credible, absolutely,” declared a legal expert on the channel. Other guests went so far as to compare Donald Trump to a mafia boss, for his propensity to “not leave a paper trail.”
And on CNN, for example, we point out that Donald Trump turned a blind eye. Since the start of the trial, his lawyers and relatives have denied journalists in the courtroom who described a defendant who sometimes dozed off.
A rather forgotten aspect on Fox News, focused on questioning the credibility of Michael Cohen as a witness. A lawyer cited as an expert compared him to Pinocchio: “He will be recognized as the great liar in chief, within the pantheon of liars in this country,” according to Andrew Stoltmann.
Another line of attack used by Donald Trump and taken up by the conservative channel: the accusation of political justice.
“Joe Biden’s entire strategy is to make us forget inflation here and wars abroad with this sham trial,” assured Republican Senator JD Vance, whose name is circulating as Donald Trump’s running mate for the November presidential election against Joe Biden.
An accusation not questioned by the channel, which did not specify that the case targeting the Republican candidate was not investigated by the federal Ministry of Justice, but by the justice system of the State of New York .
Audiences at half mast
It is difficult to know the impact that this media coverage will have on the public, in a country where many inhabitants are locked in information bubbles, on both sides of the political spectrum.
Especially since, without live broadcast of the proceedings in the courtroom – as is sometimes the case in the United States – audiences are not very good for 24-hour news television.
During the first week of the trial in mid-April, Fox News lost some 5% of its peak-hour ratings compared to the previous week, with 1.98 million viewers, and CNN lost 6%, with 596,000 viewers. according to figures from the Nielsen institute cited by the American media.
Only the most left-leaning 24-hour news channel of the three, MSNBC, saw its audience increase, by 17%, to 1.35 million viewers during peak hours.
