Study: Media 'Rigged' Against Supreme Court Nominee

Fox News reports mainstream media outlets have been “rigged” against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, according to a Media Research Center study released Wednesday.

ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows spent nearly six hours — 344 minutes — on sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump’s choice to join the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh and the White House have denied the allegations unequivocally, and the federal judge is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday. One of his accusers, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, also has agreed to testify before lawmakers.

Rich Noyes, the study’s author, said: “Both Kavanaugh and Ford will get equal time to tell their side of the story at Thursday’s hearing. That’s a much fairer forum for Kavanaugh than he’s received from the broadcast networks during the past two weeks.”

In a statement Wednesday, Kavanaugh said about the latest allegation: “This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I don’t know who this is and this never happened.”

The study said only a small percentage of the mainstream media’s coverage has been devoted to Kavanaugh’s denials and the lack of corroboration for his accusers’ accounts since the scandal exploded into the open 12 days ago.

MRC analysts found that 305 minutes of the total airtime was dedicated to Ford’s allegations. The study said accounts from the women supporting Kavanaugh, the witnesses’ accounts who did not corroborate Ford’s story and Kavanaugh’s denials in both cases collectively have only garnered 21 minutes of coverage.

Noyes added: “His flat denial was relegated to a few seconds in lengthy stories about the charges — sometimes no more than a parenthetical clause that reporters mechanically inserted in stories that bombarded viewers with the salacious details of each accusation.”